


Seven Tears of a Lonely Soul

by amazinmango



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Sad Dean Winchester, Seals (Animals), Selkies, bc mango is SUBTLE, broken-down houses as metaphors, deanie beanie has a sad :(, for the laST TIME I AM NOT TAGGING THIS WITH "SEXUAL SEALS" KAT
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-01
Updated: 2017-06-01
Packaged: 2018-11-07 05:07:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 39,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11051949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amazinmango/pseuds/amazinmango
Summary: It's said that if a truly lonely soul weeps seven tears into the ocean, a selkie will come ashore to be the lover of the one who wept. It's just a legend—until it's not.





	Seven Tears of a Lonely Soul

**Author's Note:**

> Initiator, inspiration, and instigator: thearronaut is at fault for the captivating art (Masterpost here), original idea, and many crazy-awesome thoughts, several of which I couldn’t fit in here because I’m a moron. (Timestamps-cough)
> 
> SamGirlDeanCurious is ~~a sinning sinner who sins~~ an incredibly patient and hard-working beta who blew through this over a holiday weekend _as said moron was writing it._ Thanks, babe.
> 
> Special shout-out (you know the one) to earlwyn/punkascas for being an enabling supportive squeeing yelling adorable powdered donut.
> 
>  
> 
> [the spacing is kinda assed at the moment; it shall be rectified hence.]  
> 
> 
> The town is a fictional version of Cutler, Maine, sans the naval base and otherwise constructed for the convenient use of artistic license. 

 

 

**PROLOGUE: Last House on the Left**

There’s a house on a rocky coast.

The house stands alone, white siding worn with age and wind. Its dark shingles have weathered the years well, but the tired window frames show their years. A tiny brick chimney pokes humbly alongside the roof’s ridge, just left of center.

The closest structures are a burned-out barn and defunct boathouse across a small choppy cove, within sight but at least seven minutes by a dirt road that floods at highest tide.

The relentless salt wind has carved the land into something beautiful, in a severe way. Scrubby grass rolls into to flat expanses of rock, rough-smooth and lined with the tides. Puffy clouds scud low across a moody sea.

One man inhabits this house, and he wakes up slowly. It’s a Thursday, but that doesn’t mean anything.

There's soft gray light touching the walls of the bedroom and filtering into his little nest of sheets; he seems to have somewhat cocooned himself.

A faint tinkle reaches his ears, and his subconscious immediately recognizes windchimes. Small, but not tiny; a strange, random melody that is very comforting.

He's dreaming. He's dreaming of a breeze that isn't harsh, gentle and cool instead of cold and biting. Of light that isn't sharp, from a warmer sun.

He hears the steady, quiet song of a metal chime, and he lets it carry him back to sleep.

It's a nice dream.

\- -

Dean wakes up.

He's a little stiff, and it's cold where he'd worked one of his legs outside the covers. He tries to pull it back in but ends up tangling himself to the point where he has to take the sheets off the bed, and that's how this Thursday becomes laundry day.

It sounds like there's a good breeze outside, so he can hang the sheets to dry as long as it doesn’t rain—

Dean stops, a bundle of white in his arms.

He can hear—he can hear a windchime outside.

He doesn't have any windchimes.

Dean puts the pile of sheets on the bed, and shuffles in his boxers and tee—still too chilly for the weather, despite moving around to warm up—and peers out the bedroom window. The sheer curtains reveal the same thing he's used to seeing, rocky terrain and distant trees. The sea will still be there, outside other windows, and the road that leads to town will still rest outside his front door.

But the back porch, facing the ocean—

Dean thinks to grab a hoodie, an old faded one that was once black and is now kind of blue. He pulls it over his head and sticks his feet in his slippers. Slippers Sam sent him years ago, old-man things with a full sole and lined with sherpa wool, worn and warm.

He still hears it.

Dean pulls open the big door, the oval glass fogged and pitted, and squints into the bright gray day. The chime is louder, it's here, it has to be—he opens the screen door and pushes outside, goosebumps springing to life along his bare legs. He shoves his pocketed hands down to try and cover his crotch and the screen door smacks shut behind him. He stares.

There, off the edge beam of the porch roof, hangs a little metal windchime. It's a simple set of five hollow tubes, suspended from a disc of wood. There's the little thing that bangs against the tubes gently in the middle, and a round piece of metal hung below that swings in the breeze.

It's maybe half the length of his forearm, the tones happy, tinkling softly to itself—to him—as the little piece of metal spins.

Dean stares at it for a long time, even though he's cold. The wind picks up out over the sea, heralding a coming storm.

 

 

 **ONE:** **Any Given Day**

Dean Winchester has a routine.

On sunny days, sometimes he’ll go into town. As long as it’s not right after a rain and the roads are good; it’s dirt for the first few miles out from his house, before it joins up with the two-lane 191. He visits the small hardware store and gets nails—he always needs more nails. Before spring, he'll get more sealant for the porch steps, maybe for the deck, if he's not doing anything on a Saturday.

He doesn't usually have plans on Saturdays, but it seems like the deck never really gets sealed either. Saturdays are as good a day as any. The wood is old, native, but the salt air still does its work and the boards are slowly warping, bending, raising. The heads of old nails stick up, waiting to snag an unwary sole.

There are frequent days that are cold and grey and dim, and they’re the kind of days that ask for a pot of coffee kept warm, a steady fire in the hearth; a stack of books on a side table or favorite movies binged over hot comfort food and warm, fresh-baked cookies.

But Dean doesn’t actually have a routine.

He doesn't bake.

Inside this house, with the rotting creaky deck and leaning porch rail, the coffee pot is empty. Books are covered in dust, haphazard as the day they were unpacked. The hearth is dark and the stove is cold.

On the cold and grey days, on days like today, Dean Winchester doesn't go out at all, and rusted heads of old nails stick out of cracked wood.

\- -

 

The day Dean sees the seal dawns dark, the sky weighted with heavy clouds. There’s an anticipatory feeling, even one of static though there’s no thunder, not yet. The sea is restless, and Dean doesn't exactly pay attention to the tide, but it seems like the cycle's a little off.

 

Not that he's a seaman or sailor either, but he can look out at the choppy waves, feel the salt in the wind bite his face and generally tell by the unsubtle and ugly clouds that a storm's coming in.

 

He checks the shutters outside the house, makes sure the shed is locked—not that there's a soul for miles—and he actually thinks about spending some time in an upper room of the house he doesn't use too often. It's small, and it has a vibe that calls for a beat-up comfy chair and a table lamp and maybe a stuffy bookcase, though Dean doesn't have the last. He’d found the chair at a flea market, something that reminded him of Bobby's, and the table lamp is actually a table-lamp that was set up next to it. The chair was cheap, the lamp wasn't, and Dean took them both, back when he thought this house was a new start.

 

This day would be perfect for something warm to drink—actually warm, not something in a short tumbler—and a blanket and a movie or a book, but that was—before. And today, Dean has an appointment.

 

He doesn't think about how often he's stood in the doorway to that room, thinking. About reading a book or doing something with his hands other than holding a glass.

 

The shutters are secured, the shed’s locked, and his boots are on. He grabs his sweater and then his jacket, a lone scarf left on the hooks behind them, and he goes outside to the garage.

 

\- -

 

The dirt road from his house starts straight from his front door and ducks westwards into the thick woods for about a mile before it curves south and follows a shallow cliffside, a short but steep drop to the pebbled beach below. It can feel a little chancy on windy days. Most days are windy, but Dean always needs more nails.

 

The wind doesn't let up on the way into town, but it doesn't really get any harsher, either. The sea stays unsettled in a distant way, and the coast road turns inland and through tall conifers that throw their shadows over the potholed asphalt. The shelter of the old, tall pines buffers the wind. He keeps the windows up and the rattling heat on low.

 

It takes about twelve minutes to hit the first houses, fairly spread out from each other, and the road meanders past stands of mailboxes clustered together at a wide bend, ruts in the shoulder from people getting their correspondence. Dean's is here, because he's so far up the way. He stops on the way in instead of on the way back, because he hasn't been down for a few days.

 

There's two concurrent copies of the local paper, a flyer for a missed bake sale run by the daughter of the hardware shop owner and a utility bill he was expecting. There's still a chance for leftover lemon bars because the sale was only two days ago. Something in Dean perks up a little—he needs to hit the store anyway, nails or whatever, and the kid's some kind of baking savant.

 

Another ten minutes after the mailboxes the highway veers southeast, out of the forest through little patches of tilled land and an old baseball diamond, big and empty. The tiny little town proper rolls into view in front of the coast, flatter but just as rocky. The 191 gets temporarily renamed to Cutler Road at the namesake town square. Said square is actually a circle of low brick with a statue of some important somebody. There’s evidence of a constant battle with local seabirds on bronze shoulders.

 

Dean takes the curve, truck leaning against it, and pulls up to the hardware store. The shutters are rolled down on the chicken coop that takes up one side of the building, shelter against the wind. Across the street is the grocer that carries seafood and lots of canned goods, and overflowing bushels of blue- and blackberries when they’re in season. Further down is the post office and the cobbler's shop. At the mouth of the wharf road is a tiny bakery that sells coffee. A seamstress and tailor have small shops abutting one another, and they always seem to be at odds for some reason.

 

Fiery-haired Josie had seemed nice enough when Dean first met her, but she gives off vibes that have otherwise kept him distant—he’s not sure if she’s really as sweet as she looks, and he isn’t ready to go down that road. Not that he's needed a seamstress, in any case. He can mend most of his clothes if it comes to that. The tailor is a shorter, quietly smug man with caustic wit and an accent and good suits. Dean hasn't ever needed anything tailored, but he’s run into him at the post office a few times.

 

Knight Hardware is larger than the grocer’s, and only just smaller than the local church and town hall. It has an odd little gardening section near the door that leads to the chickens. There’s trowels and potting soil and seeds, fertilizer and perlite and the bags of peat moss Dean's here for. Some of it's bagged locally, clear plastic steamed up from being inside.

 

Then there are the rows of apiary supplies that he doesn't know the names of. Collette owns the store, but her husband keeps bees in a kind of quietly hardcore way. There's a stack of little frame things that Dean thinks go in the hives, and a miniature version of a box hive mounted to the wall with a parts list and a "Build This!" note attached to it. Articles are posted on the shelves, about the decline of the continental honeybee population, pollination of the lowbush blueberry, and a stack of homemade 'Beekeeping 101' pamphlets with 'FREE' handwritten on the corners.

 

Dean doesn’t have much fresh food in the fridge (actually, he doesn’t think he has anything fresh in the fridge) and he’s in town and he can smell the chickens from here. He glances at their door, shuffling his feet, thinks about the unused room…he sets down his bags of peat moss and enters the coop.

 

The chickens cluck to each other under their breath when he comes in, the old rooster shuffling on his high perch and making himself known. He’s tall and skinny and insufferably full of himself, and rather laid-back because of it. Dean goes past the Sharpie'd signs until he hits _Meg,_ a round dark hen flattened over her nest. He gently works his hand under her side and tips her over as she _boks_ quietly at him. She's got at least four bluish eggs under her today, so he takes two. He tilts her back down, and she cocks one eye up at him, utterly unperturbed.

 

He goes to little Anna, a vividly reddish hen who never fails to sleek her feathers down and kick a leg out when he nudges her. She stretches and flaps once, but she's not sitting on anything, so Dean just gives her a look. "You just wanted attention," he says, and she looks as smug as he's ever seen a chicken look as she settles herself back down.

 

There are two hens named Ruby—he has no idea why—and the small light one has never liked him, so he goes to the darker one in the next nest over. He gets two more big brown eggs from her, but she makes more of a fuss. The rooster shuffles his wings and stands up, stretching very obviously. Dean carefully cradles the eggs in one large hand and tips his head. "Ladies," he says, and takes his leave.

 

He transfers the eggs to an empty half-dozen carton from the bin outside the coop and wipes his hand on his jeans. He almost forgets the nails and puts a good couple of handfuls in a crackly paper bag and writes their code on the outside with a pen on a chain. He spends some time looking at deck sealant before he goes back for his peat moss and manages to get everything safely to the counter.

 

He forgets about the lemon bars until he's in front of Collette. He's been handling peat moss and one of his hands has chicken poop on it, so he just shrugs. "Meg and Ruby Number Two," he says, opening the bag so Collette can count the eggs. She puts them in an empty half-carton. He pays with his usual smile, but Collette’s a keen one. He tries not to let his expression change when hers is a little sad in return; she still sends him on his way with a wet wipe and some lemon bars.

 

He loads up his truck, and then he bites his lip, looking across the street at the grocer.

 

A few minutes later, Dean loads the passenger footboard with a laden paper bag and heads to Pamela's.

 

\- -

 

"Shit weather for gardening," Pamela says in her parlor, voice something from smoky bars somewhere south and humid. He’s two days later than he said he’d be, and it’d been sunny then. Pamela knows why he didn’t come, he knows why he didn’t come and he doesn’t talk about it and she doesn’t ask.

 

Dean shrugs, and watches her pour the drink he didn't have into two glasses. Her fingers dance quickly over their rims and deftly screw the bottle shut. She holds one out to him unerringly, and he makes himself look at her dark glasses as he takes it.

 

"Couldn't stay away," Dean says, and takes a swallow. It burns.

 

Pamela just smirks around her own sip, and Dean watches the curve of her lips. He knows she knows he's watching. She also knows he's not going to do anything about it, because that ship sailed a couple years ago. She's always going to smirk anyway because that's who she is; something about that makes some part of him glad that he knows her.

 

"I can get the other side of the greenhouse up," he says, looking out one of the windows. "At least get it anchored against this wind."

 

"Storm's not going to break yet," Pamela says, in that voice that says she _knows._ Dean used to wonder, but he doesn't think too closely about it anymore. "The tomatoes'll be fine in the sunroom anyway. Take your time." She takes his grocery bag and shoos him outside.

 

Pam's tomatoes outgrew her sunroom long ago, but the last big winter storm took out her aging greenhouse and left pots piled on each other with hardly room to get in to water her surviving plants. Dean's been coming over here and there for the past few weeks, using salvaged bits of the old frame for the grow-beds and new materials Pamela ordered from Collette to build a more robust and extensive replacement.

 

The new greenhouse will take up the entire leeward side of Pamela's house. She's set back a good couple miles from the sea so the wind's mitigated just enough by the tall pines that Dean manages to get the rest of the frame put together in an hour, fingers just cold enough to hurt. He'd been hoping to finish the structure today and get her grow beds started, but the wind whips up enough that there's no way he's getting the flexible panels over the sides. He leaves the bags of peat moss inside one of the corners and checks the rest to make sure everything is properly anchored. She's got enough soil to mix with the peat moss, and she's sitting on a good chunk of everything else she needs, so he'll save it for next time. For now, the empty grow beds stand ready and help keep the whole thing braced.

 

He pokes in on the sunroom anyway, the scent of the tomato plants almost overwhelming at first. Only a couple of the plants are fruiting, one of them heavy with palm-sized reds (Dean doesn't know the names of all the varieties she has) and one taller, skinnier plant sporting green-brown ones with a flavor Dean's never found anywhere else. Pamela told him they came from a cultivar hybrid that's supposedly difficult if not impossible to grow from its own fruited seeds. Somehow, she's managed it, and she had Dean try one once. It was delicious.

 

"You can take a couple," Pamela says dryly from behind him, as Dean guiltily pets one.

 

He leaves Pam's with two browns and a clipped vine of several juicy reds that he sets next to the bags of eggs and nails in the passenger seat. He looks down at the paper bag, still cool from Pam’s fridge. Maybe he will make something later.

 

\- -

 

It seems like the sky gets darker as Dean takes the highway out of town, but it could just be driving through the trees as they get thicker, the road winding under shadows for the long stretch.

 

The treetops sway above him, too far to see from inside the truck. The further he gets from town the closer the road bends to the coastal cliffs, and there's the always-dramatic burst from forested curve to the exposed asphalt along the beach. It's often accompanied by sudden sunshine and sea breeze, but not today.

 

Dean clears the trees and falls under a heavy steel sky, wind whipping whitecaps onto the heaving sea.

 

"Shit," he says, as the truck's immediately buffeted. He tightens his hands on the wheel, keeping the tires in the narrowing lane and riding the white line, a few feet of rock between rubber and the steep drop to the beach. The gravel pings under his tires, blown onto the road.

 

He's driven in worse, but not by choice, and he’s still got one more length of forest before his own dirt track. He wants to get home and maybe make something decent to eat tonight; maybe Collette’s sad little smile, maybe Pam’s tomatoes or the promise of lemon bars after. It’s thin motivation but he wants to hang on to it. His belly rumbles on cue, and he realizes he hasn't had anything but that nip of liquor today.

 

He's usually a little better about that, but his focus goes back to the road. This side of things he can see the trees bending against the wind, inland, and he takes glances out at the waves to see if the wind’s tearing surf off of them yet.

 

The highway’s getting ready to curve back into the cover of the trees, and Dean’s sigh of relief is caught in his throat as he takes one more glance eastward.

 

There’s something on the beach, long and dark and still.

 

 

 

**TWO: The Gift**

 

Gravel crunches under the tires as Dean pulls over.

 

He sits there, heat puffing at him through the vents. A gust of wind pushes at the truck, and it rocks a little.

 

There’s something—the first thing his brain lands on is _long rock_ and that isn’t right, but it’s definitely strange. It’s a long _something_ that’s beached, like—a dolphin or one of those small dark whales, but it doesn’t have anything poking up like fins and its color is weird. Dean can’t see from here, not well enough; it looks lighter on top but somehow uneven.

 

Dean’s fingers close over the key, and he kind of turns it on instinct, maybe muscle memory. The engine shudders and goes quiet, the wind suddenly louder.

 

Dean feels his hand open the door, his legs swing out, feet hit cracked asphalt. The shock of the wind pulls tears from his eyes. It’s cold and tugs at his hair, his jacket and arms as he feels his way around the nose of the truck, hood ticking under his palm. He gasps a little with his mouth open, the air is so harsh.

 

He stands there on the other side of his truck in the gravel, still kind of stuck on giant rock or tiny whale, staring out at this thing beached just beyond the reach of the tide. The gravel scatters down onto sloping stones that fall to the beach, a narrow stretch. Rough little rocks and pebbles shush around with the water coming in and going out.

 

The thing isn’t moving that he can tell, not from here; it’s further up the beach than where he pulled over, and he doesn’t want to clamber down the stones to get to it. Between the distance and the water in his eyes from the wind he can only tell that the color is still weird, dark on the bottom and kind of less-dark and mottled on the top. It makes him think of something shapeless and dead, something that wouldn’t be recognizable even if he got up close.

 

He blinks, eyes stinging, and a tear slips free. His eyes are alternately dry and blurry and for a second he thinks the thing—twitches, maybe. He blinks again, leaning back even as one foot falls a step forward. His chest is oddly tight, and all at once he decides he doesn’t want to chance smelling it, and then he’s stumbling back into his truck.

 

He left the frigging door open and it’s freezing inside. He slams it shut and starts up and cranks the heat on higher, the engine still warm. He blinks some more and keeps his eyes down on the dash, watches the needles move when he puts it into gear and makes himself pull slowly over the gravel to get back onto the road. He looks resolutely forward, finding a speed between ‘get home before the storm’ and ‘get home without dying first.’

 

Dean berates himself all the way to his dirt road for pulling over just because he saw some nameless washed-up something on the beach in the middle of nowhere. It didn’t move, trick of the wind and water in his eyes. Not like he could do anything about it anyway.

 

The bag of nails shifts as he goes over a bump, and he hopes the chicken eggs are okay.

 

\- -

The short steps groan under his feet, and Dean has to lean back against the front door to get it to stick. His load rustles as his back thumps against it, and he tucks his chin against the wrapped lemon bars to keep them from falling off the paper bag. The door needs new weatherstripping, and he kicks the old towel into place against the bottom of the threshold behind him.

 

He drops the bag of nails on the second-hand narrow table just inside, adding the mail to a stack already there, and he nestles his keys between. He crosses the creaky wood floor to the kitchen towards the back of the house, elbowing a switch on in the hall as he goes. He puts the bag on the counter, sets the tomatoes down gently and pushes the egg carton to the backsplash by the humming fridge.

 

He washes his hands and thinks about running a disinfectant wipe over the things he’s touched since handling the chickens. There’s no wipes when he checks under the sink, but there is an old bottle of glass cleaner. Dean puts some meat and cans of fruit in the fridge, cans of green beans and broth in a cabinet, and folds up the paper bag.

 

He grabs the glass cleaner and takes a clean dishrag, starts with the inside doorknob and it kind of spirals from there.

 

His hand stinks of ammonia by the time he makes his way back to the kitchen, the downstairs knobs and handles and light switches wiped down with a pitstop on the bathroom for a pee. He drops the rag in the sink and stows the spray bottle and washes his hands again, glancing up at the shuttered window over the sink. The shutters move in the wind, dim light filtering around their edges and through the slats. He can hear them thump through the old windows.

 

Dean pats his hands on his jeans and looks at the fridge, at the tomatoes, and turns for the hall again and goes to the stairs.

 

The stairs creak, because the house is old.

 

Dean heads up to the room he doesn't use, but thinks he should. The paint's worn under his fingers on the near wall, and the floor groans under his first steps at the bottom.

 

Inside the room he doesn’t use, there's a rug tucked up to the chair, oval with weird color combinations. He’d braided it himself, back when he'd first moved here, when he thought—when he took the time to do it.  It was that or knitting old sailor's sweaters, so Dean made the rug. He thought it'd keep his hands busy.

 

Not that there weren't plenty of things he wasn't ignoring around the house, but it'd let his mind fuzz, and honestly it had felt like something he could manage. It was also kind of a pain in the ass and it's the only one he's ever done. It has lumpy spots, but it's pretty soft and he likes the colors and he does remember the feel of his bare feet on it, when it's not too cold.

 

Dean takes off his boots and puts them in the hall, outside the room.

 

The wind is blowing hard outside, but the clouds have yet to let go. Dean tentatively walks up to the chair, reaches under the shade and turns on the table light. It casts a warm glow over the chair and floor, and Dean clenches his toes briefly in his socks against the floor. He looks across at the wall that needs a bookcase, and wonders idly how much time and money it'd take to route a fireplace in here. The big one in the living area is...well, _big._ It's a bitch to clean and get going and it's easier to just turn on the heat, but then Dean also needs a newer (and larger) propane tank and code means he'd have to bury it, whereas the old one can stay where it is for now, though it just rusts more and more—

 

Dean wanders down the hall. There are more rooms upstairs that he doesn't use, one that still has some boxes that he should probably donate or something, since he can't remember what's in all of them. They’re the kind of thing he’d stow in the attic, but aside from his first couple trips up there when he was looking at the house, thinking about repairing the ductwork and replacing the insulation—

 

He hasn’t been back up there.

 

The thermostat's downstairs, of course, and there's a little discolored spot on the wall with some caulked holes where a second one used to be. Dean has no idea what happened to it; he got the house largely as-is.

 

There are dozens of little things that need doing, some big things, and Dean's had the place for a while. More dust-covered boxes live in what could be another bedroom. The deck's warped, the porch creaks in a kind of scary way. The paint's way beyond its prime, and the roof is barely okayish. The chimney needs to be swept so Dean doesn't burn the place down if he _does_ use the fireplace.

 

There are little patches he lives in; the kitchen, or at least the stovetop and the fridge and sink. There’s an old island with a cracked countertop now graced with a paper bag, and holes in the ceiling above it where Dean thinks a pan rack probably hung, once. The mudroom has an old square washer and dryer set, though the dryer also uses propane. There's a rusted pole outside that was a clothesline once, and Dean hasn't replaced it, and he mostly drapes his clothes over doors and knobs and whatever else after laundry. He usually waits for sunny days to do the sheets.

 

Dean looks into the bedroom with the boxes and goes for one, opens it, and right where he packed it is an old and familiar red-checkered binder with the faint type still legible on the cover over the faded pattern. The thick cardboard is fuzzy the corners. The box is one that Dean would put in the attic, but hasn’t, and there’s other stuff under the heavy book that he doesn’t look at. He’s slow and maybe a little reverent when he takes it out, and he sets it on another box before carefully closing the one it came from. He tucks it under his arm and walks by the room he doesn’t use and goes down to the kitchen.

 

He’s got some fresh meat and a couple carrots and a celery bunch, and he’s pretty sure he remembers how to make soup, but he takes the old cookbook down with him, just in case.

 

He leaves the light on in the room, and later, he takes his bowl up there and sips from the spoon, slowly turning yellowed pages and reading into the night.

 

\- -

 

The storm either broke or faded; if it rained, Dean never heard it. He fell asleep in the chair, empty bowl on the table, a tiny bit of soup dried in the dip of the spoon. The cookbook lays open across his lap and he’s got a crick in his neck, but the rest of his body doesn’t protest too much about the chair. It’s pretty comfy, neck aside. He feels kind of grainy and cold but not that bad, belly still kind of satisfied, and he stretches in place, jerking to catch the book when it tries to slide off his legs onto the floor.

 

He doesn’t see the scrap of paper slip out of the book and flutter under the chair.

 

He takes the book and bowl down to the kitchen, and makes himself wash the bowl and the soup pot he’d set to soak. He leaves the book on the island next to the paper bag, and goes back upstairs to take a shower.

 

\- -

 

Dean doesn’t usually go for drives, not anymore, and he doesn’t often do it the day after he’s made the trip into town, but he has a job to finish and Pamela’s isn’t town.

 

She’s not actually home, so Dean figures she’s on her own grocery run or something; there’s a local kid that helps her out with stuff like that sometimes, Dean’s seen him around.

 

Dean leaves his truck out front and lets himself into the back and gets to work. The day’s overcast and brightly gray, wind ever-present but a lot less harsh than yesterday. It takes him a couple hours, all told, to get the panels up and secure, the perlite mixed in with the peat moss and settled into the rock at the bottom of the raised growbeds. One of the mesh sheets at the bottom of a bed tears, but he has enough to stretch it out and re-staple it without making _too_ big of a mess.

 

Pam finds him turning some of her compost into the topsoil of the finished beds, inside a constructed greenhouse with empty bags of peat moss scattered around his feet.

 

“Well shit, Winchester,” she says, and Dean can’t help but give her a little grin that she will sense, if not see. He agrees to stick around and help her haul her tomatoes out to their new home.

 

“It would’ve been easier if you did that before we put all these pots everywhere,” Dean says dryly as Pam feels her way around the boundaries of the new greenhouse and beds to learn them. She gives him this _look_ and somehow he gets dragged into planting the damn things despite his protests.

 

“Don’t give me that brown-thumb crap,” she tells him, soil dotting her skin up to her elbows, thick under her nails. “Pass me the Romanesco. It’s a little guy that I think was by your right knee—yeah, that’s him.” Dean watches her fingers dance over the leaves.

 

Together they get all of Pam’s tomato plants settled, a couple remaining in containers, their cages nested between growbeds.

 

“Not half-bad, Dean-o,” Pam says, hands at her hips. She inhales, and Dean does too. The scent of the plants and moss and compost is strong in the greenhouse. He kind of wishes she could see it.

 

There’s a moment when he thinks Pam is going to make an offer for him to stay for lunch, and she feels him feel it. She grins at him instead and leaves a soil-handprint on his ass when she slaps him goodbye instead, after stuffing his back pocket with bills that she doesn’t let him refuse.

 

Dean takes it slow heading back home, thinking idly about the cookbook when he reflexively glances out at the beach on the open stretch.

 

It looks like there’s nothing where the dead thing was, and Dean drives closer, peering out across the windshield until he finally gives in and pulls off into the gravel.

 

He gets out of the truck, and he walks around the hood. He’s closer, and there’s no water in his eyes this time—it’s the same spot, and there’s nothing there.

 

He looks out at the sea, vast and relatively calm, and finds his feet at the edge of the short, rocky cliff.

 

Dean scrapes one of his hands on a rock but clambers down, until his boots hit the stony beach. There’s a stretch of sand amid the rocks, and he’s sure this was the spot—over here, by a longish flat part of bare stone. The thing was here, and if Dean’s remembering correctly it was stretched out over this rock.

 

There are little dips and rain-holes in the stone, cracks and spots where pieces have come off over—well, lots of years and tides, he supposes. The tide comes up a little short of the stone when it’s high, but storm surge can send it all the way up to the cliff. Dean’s seen it come up that far before, and he’s only lived here a few years.

 

He walks around the stone, shoes swishing through the sand and kicking through rocks. It’s not that it’s weird, necessarily, for something to wash up—it’s that it was big, and dead, and now it’s totally gone as though it was never there.

 

Dean goes all around the big flat stone, finding sand and more rocks. Some dead scrub that grew and expired and stayed there, dried roots entrenched in the stone.

 

He looks back out at the sea and sky for a while, and then he goes home.

 

\- -

 

There’s a can by his back porch.

 

Dean doesn’t notice it right off; he parks the truck in her spot, checks the shed, and goes inside to wash soil out from under his nails and the creases of his wrists. He takes the spray bottle upstairs and does those knobs and switchplates, and then remembers his shutters have been closed all day, so he opens those. He ends up cleaning the windows upstairs because they’re frankly disgusting, and he finds dead flies that he’s pretty sure weren’t there before.

 

The light in the house reveals dust over everything, but that he’s used to. He drops the rag in the washer downstairs and puts what’s left of the glass cleaner back under the sink. He scribbles a half-hearted list of cleaning stuff on a pad he forgot he had in a junk drawer. It’s got a cheap magnet on the back, so he sticks it to the side of the fridge.

 

He made a big pot of soup, so he’s got leftovers for later, but he’s kind of munchy right now. He eyes one of the brown tomatoes on the counter. Maybe helping Pam out energized him, or something. He feels…pretty okay right now, and he got himself a loaf of bread before…

 

He makes a pretty decent tuna sandwich. Fairly plain, just the tuna, some lettuce and tomato and pepper, because he didn’t go through the trouble of making actual tuna salad. It’s a little messy so he wraps it up in a paper towel and chews as he goes out back through the mudroom.

 

The old door creaks, and the shitty screen door whines, and the sea wind hits him in the face but it feels fresh. The porch boards haven’t un-warped under his feet, but he’s not _that_ motivated.

 

He wanders across the porch—carefully—and stands at the top step when he sees the can.

 

It’s on the bottom step.

 

He chews his tuna, and stares at it for a while.

 

It’s a soup can or something, with the ridges. There’s no label and it’s not rusty, so it’s gotta be aluminum instead of tin or steel, but—it’s _shiny._ It’s a little far for sea-junk to wash up to his porch, even if presumably blown further by the wind. He’s definitely never had anything deposit itself _on_ one of the porch steps before.

 

The only thing Dean can think of is it being from his own house, maybe some random-ass leftover from under the porch.

 

The back porch extends out from the foundation of the house, and the dirt’s eroded away at one corner, concrete exposed and crumbling. Remnants of wood lattice hang here and there, sections of narrow slats still crossing over one another in places. It isn’t closed off by any means, and presumably there’s some more ductwork and plumbing shit under there, but he hasn’t ever crawled under and looked.

 

It’s just so far out—from the woods, from anyone else. He doesn’t think an animal would have taken up residence there, not without food nearby when the house was basically abandoned before. And then there’s the can— _sitting_ on the bottom step, upright, empty, and shiny. No label, not even a scrap of one.

 

Dean crouches, and remembers his sandwich when he reaches reflexively with his occupied hand. He slowly takes another bite and reaches with the other, picking the can up.

 

It’s cold to the touch, and when he turns it in the light it’s not pristine; there are little dents but they’re not rusted either. In fact—

 

Dean swallows his bite, and lowers the sandwich.

 

The can held something, at some point; the inside isn’t as shiny as the outside, but on the outside there’s the total lack of label, maybe a stripe where adhesive once was, and the little dents that aren’t random, like from gravel and sea and sand.

 

They go in a line before they end, and if Dean turns the can like this—

 

There’s another set of dents on the opposite side of the can. Two rows of dents, opposing each other, and it looks like they’re a little offset.

 

“Huh,” Dean says, and finishes his sandwich. He takes the can to the side of the house and drops it in the black trash bin he uses for recycling, where it bounces against the bottom. He wads up his paper towel and goes inside.

 

 

 

**THREE: Colored Glass**

 

The next time Dean sees the seal, the weather’s blustery again—lots of gusty wind and threatening clouds. It rains a little in the morning, but it’s the wind that has Dean texting Pamela to ask her how the greenhouse is holding up. The spelling on the return messages is pretty good for her voice-to-text thing, though one or two words do get through sometimes. She tells him the greenhouse is fine, but he might want to check in with Collette about her coop.

 

Dean’s a little curious, because Collette’s husband is more than handy but _she_ owns the hardware store, and she’s shown Dean a thing or two over the last couple years. At least, she’s tried to; when she learned he’d bought the old house up the way past the barn, she was full of ideas and not just because she could sell him a shitload of materials. She’s a nice person, and Dean appreciates it, but it’s—she’s almost _too nice._ She keeps her distance while offering help at the same time, like she _knows,_ and Dean feels like an asshole for hating it.

 

Especially because the place needs the work, they both know it, and Collette’s knowledge is valuable. Far as he knows she’s from here, or around here, so she knows the weather as well as how to make a house stand up to it.

 

He wants to get himself out of his thoughts, and that could mean going into town, or working here. He’s kind of torn; he’s slowly sort of cleaning the room with the rug upstairs, and he moved a couple boxes around. He got as far as opening one, shuffling through some miscellaneous crap, and getting bored. Boredom is different from—from the other stuff.

 

He kinda wants to bring the last of his soup to Pam, so she can try it. He pokes around the fridge and decides there’s not enough left, and he’ll make more and take it to her next time. Maybe steal another couple tomatoes.

 

He idles around the upstairs, touching box lids but not opening them, fingers playing at worn cardboard flaps. He leaves cleanish streaks in the dust here and there, and sighs. He _did_ make a list of cleaning stuff, and Pam’s put a bug in his ear.

 

Dean puts his feet in his boots and gets into his truck.

 

The wind is steady for a time, not shoving the truck around, which Dean appreciates through the length of road by the beach. He keeps his eyes forward and moves back into the trees, passes by Pam’s driveway sometime later, and then the road’s curving into town.

 

The wind’s gotten attitude again, tossing some raindrops in his face. It closes the truck’s door for him, barely missing his fingers. Dean goes inside the hardware store, pulling at his jacket to get it settled back over his shoulders. Collette isn’t at the counter, so Dean heads for the back. The rain gets heavier as he goes.

 

He hears the chickens before he’s halfway down the bee aisle, and there’s something banging—like one of the roof panels or something. He ducks into the coop and instantly the wind noise is a lot more intense, there’s rain on the tin roof and the chickens clucking loudly. The old rooster crows accusatorily at him as soon as he closes the door.

 

Collette’s on a tiny little stool reaching for a flapping piece of tin that’s gonna slice her fingers off, rain getting blown inside. The rooster crows again and flaps hard—his wings are bigger than Dean thought—and Collette turns and sees him. Her hand almost catches the corner of the tin before it twangs back out of her reach, and the rooster leaps from his perch. Dean startles, and Collette yanks something off her hand—it’s a big leather glove that she pushes against Dean’s chest, hard—and she turns to the rooster.

 

Dean blinks, then looks at the chickens all skinny and startled and flappy. He shoves his hand into the glove and kicks the stool aside, reaching up and stretching out his fingers. The tin whacks him once, bangs away again. It’s slick but the glove’s not wet yet—almost—almost—

 

He snags the tin and yanks it down, and once he’s got it at the right angle the wind doesn’t tear at it as badly. He turns his head and comes face to face with the rooster.

 

He flinches a little, but stays holding the tin, fingers starting to get wet through the old leather. Collette has the rooster’s legs in her hand and his body tucked against her side, and he’s _bokking_ agitatedly but not struggling, craning his neck to look at Dean, the roof, and his hens.

 

“Thank you,” she says, voice heavy with relief, and Dean grins. “Very good timing.”

 

“Do you have something to secure this with?” Dean asks, raising his voice a little over the rain. The rooster’s head focuses on him abruptly, and he’s pretty sure it’s glaring at him. “Uh,” he says.

 

Collette gives him a little half-grin and resettles the rooster with her arm. His head stays fixed in space and it’s very unsettling. “I’ll get this guy settled and head out to tack that back down—just keep holding it and keep an eye on the girls.” The rooster keeps muttering to himself and doesn’t take his beady little eyes off Dean. “Balthazar’s like that around men,” she says. “Don’t take it personally.”

 

Dean sort of nods, stuck on _Balthazar._ “As…long as he’s not gonna go for my eyes,” he says, mostly serious, and Collette chuckles. She’s got a kind of rich voice, and Dean thinks he could stand to hear her laugh more. She takes— _Balthazar_ to his perch and actually pushes him at it, and he flaps once and wraps his feet around it. He turns around, stretches, and crows. Loud.

 

Dean covers one ear, and Collette just puts her hands on her hips and matches the rooster stare for stare. “And?” she says, and Dean swears it huffs at her before relaxing—a little—and staring at Dean again.

 

“Is he—am I gonna be cool without you in here?” Dean says, wondering if he’s not supposed to make eye contact or something.

 

“Worst he can do is kick at you,” Collette says, which is not at all reassuring. “His spurs are dull, so if he does just protect your face.”

 

Dean stares.

 

Collette laughs and leaves with a “you’ll be fine” and Dean holds the piece of tin and looks from Balthazar to Meg, Anna, and the Rubies.

 

Meg’s reflattened herself on her next box, and she looks largely unbothered now that the flapping tin has stopped making noise. The Rubies are _bokking_ quietly, shifting, and Anna is standing over her empty box, still tall and skinnied and stretched out towards Dean a little.

 

“Hey, sweetheart,” he says, soothingly, and she tilts her head, her red feathers shining. Dean nods his own towards the rooster. “You’ll protect me, right?”

 

She _boks._

 

\- -

 

Collette gets the tin secured in just over a minute, and she comes back in with a hammer in her belt and milk crate in hand. “Well,” she says, dusting her palms against her pants. “It was great you showed up when you did.”

 

“Pam mentioned you might need a hand?” Dean sort of asks, and Collette’s face goes thoughtful.

 

“Huh,” she says, and sets the crate down and motions him out of the coop and into the quieter shop. “I’d say you’ve given me a hand. I haven’t spoken to her since yesterday.” She doesn’t sound all that surprised, and honestly Dean isn’t really either. It’s…Pam.

 

“Well—uh,” Dean says, shuffling his feet a little. “Cool. I’ll—I gotta get some stuff.” He’s grateful when she nods and turns away, and he wanders the aisles a little until he picks up most of his list.

 

“Where’s Cain?” Dean asks when he’s at the counter, blinking. He hadn’t meant to ask aloud.

 

“Making sure the hives are okay,” Collette says easily. “He truly dotes on those bees. The hives he’s built can withstand these winds, but—” she smiles fondly. “They’re his babies.”

 

Dean huffs gently, and realizes he’s got a smallish smile on his own face. Collette insists on sending him off with some eggs, free of charge, “from grateful girls.” He pays for the rest, takes his bag, and thinks of Collette and her chickens, Cain and his bees, on the way back to the house.

 

\- -

 

The gusts aren’t as severe when he comes back out through the trees to the open road along the beach, but the rain’s coming down, the thing is on the rock, and it’s not dead.

 

Dean pulls over into the gravel, hard, and the truck skids for a few feet.

 

He gets out, leaves the truck running, the door cold under his fingers. Rain patters on his jacket and his hair, and his feet take him to the drop and it’s only when the toes of one boot poke over the edge that he stops himself.

 

He doesn’t know why he needs to see this thing, only that he _does_ and it frightens him a little.

 

It’s strange, because the color’s different, it’s like that lighter part is on the bottom now with the dark on top—

 

There are spots of dark on the lower half, and all at once Dean realizes it’s from the rain, and the lighter color is where it’s dry and it raises its head.

 

It’s—it’s a fucking seal.

 

Dean’s never actually seen a seal in person before, but the shape somehow calls _seal_ to mind. It’s _huge._

 

They’re supposed to be—small and brown and flappy, playing with balls and barking. Dean vaguely remembers David Attenborough saying something about how smoothly they move through the water, how ungainly they are on land, something else, too fuzzy to remember. He used to watch nature shows when he was a kid, remembers how it fascinated him but not as much as his little brother.

 

The seal is there, on the rock, and it’s looking at him.

 

The rain slows, lessens, and the wind seems to calm, just a little, and for a moment it’s the sound of the sea again and not the storm.

 

There’s something—Dean has no idea what, just—a _something_ , a feeling that’s weirdly pervasive in the salty air. It’s not quite fear, but it’s not quite safety. Seals don’t—they don’t hurt people, right?

 

Dean absurdly wants to call out, though he’s not sure what the hell he would say. Water starts to run from his hair down the side of his face and neck, and he shivers.

 

The seal’s weird-shaped, like a big long tube of—well, of fat, and when its head shifts on its neck it’s far more flexible than Dean would have thought. Its movements are somehow subtle, which is kind of weird. It tilts its head, and Dean can’t shake how the thing is just _staring._

Dean’s up on the rocky bank, and he’s closer than when he first saw the thing— _was_ it the seal? It had to have been it, on the rock the first time. All at once he remembers what it had looked like and he has the impression of a long, hard swim, of bone-weary exhaustion.

 

He blinks, and the seal doesn’t move, still staring. Still—tilty-headed, two-toned and sitting there, on the rock.

 

Dean doesn’t know what to do. It’s a seal. He doesn’t think he’s supposed to report it, or to whom, or even why. He knows there are lots of seals in California, and in like, the icy oceans or whatever, and this one isn’t doing anything, it’s not harming anyone, it’s just—there. It doesn’t look like it’s hurt, not that he can see from here. Maybe he should check it out—

 

Dean slowly backs to his truck, not sure why he’s being careful. _Ungainly,_ he remembers. Slow.

 

And, as far as he knows, not exactly a predator to worry about. (What do they even _eat?_ Fish? Seaweed?)

 

Dean gets in the warmer interior of the truck, and closes the door, and puts her into gear. He wheels back onto the road, and he drives slowly by.

 

He watches the seal watch him in the mirror, all the way back into the trees.

 

\- -

 

Dean gets home and puts the cleaning stuff on the kitchen island so he won’t forget to actually use it before he just puts it away.

 

He opens the shutters on the lee side of the house, but leaves the seaside shut since the wind is still there. Less, but there.

 

The rain comes and goes, more occasional salt spray than anything else. He changes into sweats and turns the heat up in the house a little, eats the last of his soup as it gets dark. His thoughts keep going back to the seal. He wonders if it _was_ hurt, if it’ll be okay.

 

He plinks his spoon around his empty bowl for a while, and then he dumps it in the sink. He takes out the cleaning stuff from Collette’s paper bag and grabs the all-surface cleaner. He doesn’t realize he’s out of paper towels until he goes for one and finds a cardboard tube, so he pulls that off the holder and grabs some newspaper and other random crap for recycling and shoves it all in the big brown bag.

 

He goes to the back door in his slippers and hoodie and flicks the porch light on, pushes out into the cold sea wind. He avoids the bad boards and creaks down the short steps and nearly kills himself when his foot skids across something on the bottommost stair.

 

He catches himself in the sandy ground, one hand on the old railing. The paper of the bag protects him from snagging splinters, and he turns to look at the steps.

 

The porch light needs to be brighter, but there are fucking shards of _glass_ across the step, arrayed in a little line except where he kicked them, and he’s even managed to gouge the wood of the stair with one.

 

He awkwardly lifts his foot to check his slipper, but it’s fine—he squats, shivering because he wore the slippers without socks and his foot hurts, looks closer, and reaches for a piece.

 

It’s dull, smooth-rough. It’s beach glass.

 

There are chunks of beach glass on his porch stairs.

 

Dean holds the paper bag, crinkling in his fist, and puts the piece back down. It’s too cold and dark so he stands up and walks to the black trash bin, yanks off the top, and as he looks down to drop in the bag he sees the faint glint of the can at the bottom.

 

Something tickles the back of his brain. He stares some more, and then drops the bag inside and shuts the bin.

 

He carefully goes over the last step on his way inside. He grabs his flashlight and hopes the batteries are good, testing it in the mudroom. He wipes at the lens a little and shines the beam on his deck, a bit more careful as he approaches the steps. The light shows the colors of the glass, blue and green and a frosty white one, a couple brown. All kinds of glass, he thinks, mostly dull and that rough-smooth texture, a couple points that could be sharp, but no nasty edges.

 

He gathers them up carefully, putting them in the pocket of his hoodie. They’re fairly heavy and pretty good size, and weigh down the worn fabric. He shines the flashlight around but he thinks he gets them all, including the one he stepped on.

 

He goes inside, and puts them on the kitchen island. He brushes at some hoodie pocket fluff, and pokes at a brown one, turning it slowly with his finger across the stone counter.

 

It’s shinier than some of the others, with a clear edge that is maybe sharp. Maybe it’s newer, maybe it broke recently. The others are two different shades of blue, but the green pieces look the same, and the clear one—it’s more _white_ than clear, finely pitted and sanded (literally, he supposes) with that rough-smoothness unique to beach glass.

 

The thing is, there is _no one out here._ If a pile of beach glass was scattered over the actual beach, closer to the surf, that’d be something. For it to appear on his porch step, lined up like this…

 

Dean goes to his bedroom, where an old computer sits on a small table.

 

It’s a laptop that he inherited from someone, and it’s _old_ but it works. It has to be constantly connected to its power brick, and that to the wall. He has actual dial-up, a landline for the purpose but no actual phone connected to it, just the laptop.

 

He taps at the keys without pressing them while it boots, cranking away and the fan spinning up loudly. It takes approximately eighty years, as will the net if he pops that open—he has the beginnings of some vague idea about searching for seals when the screen resolves and his eyes land on the little email shortcut, sitting in the corner near the recycle bin like he’d meant to toss it in there and didn’t quite throw hard enough.

 

A beat of guilt is followed by anger and then resentment. It’s kind of muddy, who the feelings are for. They swirl around a little, settle in his gut and coalesce back into guilt, aimed exactly at one place.

 

Dean clicks, and listens to the laptop clicking and chugging as it loads his email.

 

\- -

 

_Sammy_

Dean deletes that line twice.

 

_Sam_

The cursor blinks for a while, and Dean gets up and makes himself coffee. He has to pour out the pot because he didn’t clean the damn thing and it tastes like burnt dust, and then he rummages in his cupboards and finds some teabags. He’s not really a _tea person,_ but he warms some water on the stove, and adds more sugar than maybe he should, and takes a mug with him to the computer.

 

He opens the browser, listening to the archaic pings and electronic squeals. Maybe it’s to procrastinate on his not-email. He types _seals._ It leads to the expected pages, albeit very slowly, because his net isn’t _that_ bad but his computer can’t handle a newer browser or something and so shit loads kind of weird and broken half the time. Under _Images_ are lots of brown, gray, speckled and fuzzy white seals. Pups, they’re called, the babies. They’re stupidly adorable, and he finds the corners of his mouth tugging up just looking at them.

 

There’s no real size reference, not just from the pictures, and a lot are just close-ups of their heads, dark eyes and—what the hell is an _elephant seal,_ what even is that nose?

 

Dean clicks and scrolls, and there’s a picture of a skull that doesn’t immediately evoke _seal;_ it looks almost canine, with some gnarly teeth.

 

Dean clicks it to enlarge it, and blinks.

 

He scoots his creaky chair back and goes down the hall to his slippers and grabs his flashlight.

 

It’s still fucking cold outside and he shivers the entire way to the trash bin, where he fumbles it open and tips it and shoves the paper bag aside to grab the shiny can.

 

Safely inside and warmer, he absently rolls the can in his fingers as he reads, thumb dipping into the dents and rubbing there.

 

He searches _seal teeth_ and those results are very different.

 

More skulls, some black-and-white illustrations, but lots of open-mouthed seals with some seriously-damaging looking choppers.

 

Dean had no idea.

 

Well, it’s not like he’s a _marine biologist_ or anything, and maybe the thought’s a little bitter, because he remembers evenings at the foot of a sofa in front of an old TV and Attenborough’s voice, a bowl of chips or popcorn or some random snacks, peanut M &Ms, two pairs of little socked feet.

 

He’s pretty sure seals happened in there somewhere, but that was…forever ago.

 

Dean eventually closes the browser, because he’s not sure what he’s looking for, and he’s probably not going to see that seal ever again and maybe that’s a good thing because _teeth—_

 

He remembers the weird feeling on the beach. Not quite fear, not quite safe.

 

The email window is waiting for him, and absurdly the internet disconnection makes him feel weirdly safer about typing, and his fingers start moving and then they don’t stop. He has to backspace a few times, fixes some typos in the beginning, but he just—he writes, and the email fills a page and it’s a giant paragraph that even he can’t read, but he got it _out._

He doesn’t send it. The cursor hovers over the _X_ in the corner.

 

He saves it as a draft, and then he opens a new one.

 

He types slower, shorter, and when he thinks it’s done—not right, not even good or correct, just _done—_ he saves it, and closes it, and then he shuts the laptop. The fan whines for a while, and he takes the cold tea to the kitchen.

 

He makes himself wash the mug, brush his teeth, and then he crawls into bed.

 

\- -

 

Dean dreams.

 

Gentler wind, warmer sun. The soft tinkle of metal.

 

He wakes up on Thursday, burritos himself, and begins to strip his sheets once he’s gotten extricated when he hears it.

 

Dean stands out back looking at the small metal chime hanging from his porch that wasn’t there last night, and he listens to it for a while.

 

He goes inside where a dented shiny can holds chunks of beach glass on his cracked kitchen island.

 

He goes to his bedroom.

 

\- -

 

_Sam,_

_I know it’s been a long time. I know this is random and you don’t have to answer. Maybe this is weird. I don’t know._

_I saw a seal and I thought it might be hurt. I saw it twice, off the beach by the road heading up to the house. It was really BIG, and it wasn’t moving a lot, but it looked okay. Should I call somebody, or do you know anything about seals? I mean, I don’t know if it’s your area of study or whatever, but if you do. If you want._

_I’m here._

_Dean_

 

_PS Do seals hoard shit? Shiny things, like magpies?_

 

\- -

 

Dean looks over the email, once, and makes himself leave _I’m here_ and not touch it, not type any more.

 

He puts his cursor in the address bar and types from memory:

 

winchester.s@natsci.uscb.edu

 

He hits _Send._

 

 

— —

 

**FOUR: The Boathouse**

_Dean,_

_I’m not really sure what you want me to say. You contacting me about_ this _of all things—you didn’t even tell me how you’re doing or ask_

_You didn’t even ask._

_Never mind. Check and see if the seal is there tomorrow, or if it appears in distress. Look below for some resources on local wildlife services, in case they need to respond. As long as it was moving and not physically injured, it may have just been traveling. You’re like ten or so miles from a place called Seal Island, Dean._

_Sam_

_No, seals don’t hoard anything that I’m aware of, but I’ll ask around._

 

Dean rubs a hand down his face, staring at his laptop screen with its too-bright line of broken pixels lancing across one side to the other. He’s in boxers and slippers and a tee, and it’s kind of chilly and the guilt-anger-resentment makes him open up his draft email, line after unbroken line of shittiness he wants to send and knows it would be stupid to. He opens a blank one.

 

_Sam,_

He stares at his new first line, the cursor blinking. He wants to say a lot of things.

 

_Thanks for emailing me back._

_Thanks for being a dick right off._

_Thanks for respondi_

_Thank you for replying_

_Tha_

He deletes, and deletes, and deletes.

 

_Sam,_

_I didn’t know if I could ask. And before you get pissy I mean it, I don’t know if you want that from me and I don’t want to assume. I_

_It was hard to reach out and_

It takes Dean more than an hour to get something down he feels like sending, except that he also doesn’t. His chest is tight and his throat thick.

 

_It was hard to contact you, and take that however you need to. Thank you for emailing me back, and for what it’s worth, I meant what I said._

_I’m here._

_However you want that to be._

_Dean_

_PS Seal Island has puffins on it. It’s a Puffin Island._

_PPS do seals eat people_

\- -

 

Dean takes a picture of the can and the glass and thinks about sending it to Sam. He figures he could also reach out to whatever local flavor of marine biologist or wildlife people are around here, but—

 

Sam emailed him back.

 

Overnight.

 

Dean wants to read into that and he also wants to stay in bed all fucking day and forget about everything. Instead, he bundles up, though the day’s nicer than the past few, and he sits on the top step of his porch, looking out at the sea. If he still smoked, he would be doing it now.

 

He made some more tea, because it made sense once he decided he was gonna sit on his ass and be cold outside, so he sips at the mug—he brewed it too bitter, and he thinks he might actually like it that way—and he toes at the gouge he put in the bottom stair where he stepped on the beach glass.

 

There’s a lot to think about. Maybe there isn’t and he just thinks there is. However that makes sense. His mind is kind of on a low hum, something in the background moving, turning over, folding on itself and opening back up different. He lets it, and stares out at the sea.

 

His back porch has scrubby beach that turns into rocky and sandy beach that gives way to the sea, a smallish distance away. The sea breeze is usually pretty steady, often strong.

 

Sam doesn’t respond that day. Dean heats up some soup—from a can—and thinks about cleaning the floors. He thinks about dusting inside the room, about stacking some books and maybe getting some cinderblock and plywood or something, poor-man’s shelving.

 

He gets the dusting done, and that kind of mutates into cleaning the old room—the baseboards and room corners requiring some serious elbow grease—and he ends up back outside, on the porch.

 

Above his head, hung on a nail he’s not sure was there before, the silver chime tinkles and rasps, the little round metal piece spinning slowly.

 

\- -

 

Dean dreams.

 

He dreams of moving through darkness, and sometimes lightness, diffuse and cold. Of vast emptiness that is unknowable, at its farthest reaches, possibly infinite.

 

He moves, he continues, and it’s a hard swim. The waters are cold, then warm, almost unbearably warm. He tingles, and he feels liquid.

 

The waters cool and he becomes energized for an all-too-brief time, shafts of light caressing his body in a way he can almost sense. He hungers, but it is important that he reach his goal. Time is short and the distance is yet long.

 

He swims, and he swims.

 

The waters grow chill again, mix strangely with warmer currents that push and tug, temperamental and unfamiliar. Things become cold, and it is not the relief he sought. It is more familiar but the journey has been long, and hard, and he is very, very tired.

 

He swims, and he dreams of finally, _finally_ reaching a distant shore, rough, rocky sand under him that his body has never known, and he is home.

 

He dreams of heaving aching muscles onto land, of a stretch of flat stone barely warmed, of a journey over at long last.

 

In his sleep, he sighs.

 

\- -

 

The third time Dean sees the seal is the day Sam emails him again, and his email signature is there. Dean notices it because it was just his name before, and that means he deleted it the first time.

 

It has a phone number that looks official, and a department and a title, and Dean doesn’t respond.

 

Instead, he goes outside.

 

It’s a late gray morning, and the wind’s up again, time of year as much as location. It’s bitter and biting and there are heavy clouds, and Dean shouldn’t go far, but he doesn’t want to be inside.

 

He fools around at the edge of his property, shuffling what sand he can find between the rocks when blue-green stands out in the colorless light of the day.

 

It’s a piece of beach glass, the blue-green (green-blue?) one he hasn’t seen before. Dean looks at it, and then he looks around, just…just in case.

 

There’s only one thing further up the beach, the decrepit barn and abandoned boathouse sitting precariously at water’s edge. The cove between his house and the barn isn’t a smooth curve but a sharp and deep one. A narrow strip of sand butts up against the feet of bare cliffs, uneven points rearing up into the gray sky.

 

There’s _nothing out here,_ except the barn and boathouse, and in the sand between his house and the other end of the cove is another chunk of glass.

 

It’s bigger and somehow less…pretty than the others, dulled to the point that the color is mostly just dark. It’s sharp and rough and heavy.

 

It’s impulse or maybe the first light touch of insanity, but he hurries back inside and gets the can before pushing out the back door, smaller bits of colorful glass strewn across the cracked kitchen island.

 

\- -

 

The dirt road has to stay well back from the cliff edges because the terrain is so craggy. The skinny beach is a more direct path to the barn and boathouse, if one doesn’t mind walking with only so much solid ground to step on. Short of swimming, anyway. But the cliffs also show signs of high tide, lines of crusted salt and dried…whatever, plant or mineral buildup making layers over the years. As long as he doesn’t spend too much time down low, he’ll be fine. Or the sea will swallow him.

 

(He has a strange sense-memory of the water’s near icy-coldness being familiar, a feeling of… _home._ He looks out to his right over frothy, angry waves that don’t look welcoming at all.)

 

Dean has the can in his hands, the first piece of teal glass rattling in the bottom. The front pocket of his old hoodie’s weighed down with two big chunks that wouldn’t fit in its mouth. They’re also rougher and kind of ugly. He can feel pointy bits against his torso through the fabric.

 

Dean finds he’s breathing a little harder, and he makes himself look forward again. His eyes land on the old boathouse is a ways out yet, at the end of the cove’s far arm, and he feels a weird sense of unease.

 

It’s not merely old, but _worn._ Abandoned, left to weather the salt and rain and wind. Its sides are flaking and gray, the roof missing shingles. The intact windows have clouded glass that Dean knows is pitted and greenish up close. He remembers the creaking timbers of the exposed studs and the old rafters, still holding up the roof, when he’d explored before, wondering if he was trespassing and remembering the sense that nobody cared about the little spit of land that looks like so much sand, shallow and ready to be overcome by the sea on a single heaving whim.

 

The metal of the can is chilled when he moves his fingers, barely warmed where he’s touched it, and even in the cold, the palms of his hands are clammy with sweat.

 

He’s never walked this far with the weather so bad, the waves spitting into the wind, salt stinging his eyes and pulling at the skin of his cheeks in a strange way.

 

There’s another piece of glass half-buried in the sand several yards on, just as dull and colorless.

 

It’s—there’s something in the air, the clouds growing heavier, the atmosphere crackling with static. It’s strange, the humidity clinging to the skin of his arms, hairs tingling.

 

It’s a shiver on the wind, a weird vibration in the sand.

 

Dean’s feet take him closer to the boathouse even as the hair on his neck prickles. The waves are so loud that they dull into a constant rumble.

 

He thinks it’s maybe thunder.

 

Another piece of glass catches his eye, somehow visible despite how long it’s been here against the darkened wet ground.

 

His hoodie’s getting heavier.

 

Dean’s exposed, pointed cliffs to his left and unsettled sea to his right, wet sand and rocks under his feet and a heavy gray sky bearing down on him from above.

 

He thinks the tide’s coming in, and he jerks his head when he _swears_ he sees something black out of the corner of his vision, but there’s only wave after wave. The wind froths the whitecaps into bitterly cold spray.

 

The initial fat raindrops feel almost warm, and Dean warily resumes walking, staring out over the dark water.

 

He’s not dressed for this. His hoodie’s gonna soak through, and he’s on foot so he’ll freeze on the way back—

 

Lightning cracks hard above him, a physical thing it’s so close, and he ducks, flailing his arms out and skidding a step. The glass in the hoodie pocket bounces against him. He can’t hear the can rattle over the thunderclap, can’t hear anything but the way it rolls on through the ground, up his legs and through the air, into his lungs, his core. He swears he can feel the static, and the sky opens up.

 

The rain lashes him in gusts of biting wind. Dean finally turns into it, picking his way over the rockier strip of beach leading nearly straight west to the boathouse. The old barn is out of view beyond the top of the cliffs, but he knows the spit only goes so long and they’ll drop away and he’ll find something, some form of shelter as he raises a hand into the wind—

 

The cliffs tumble down into rocks and then layers of flat stone, the sand loose and moist. The boathouse is there, old and worn but still standing. Dean scrambles up loose rock to the flat part of land, to the east side of the structure where what’s left of the decking turns west and the broken old pier slopes into the sea. Pilings are worn to almost nothing, leaning until they disappear into the waves.

 

Thunder rumbles again, strange, close, and Dean tears his eyes away from the dark water, from visions of something blacker between the pilings. Dean can’t tell if he’s being pelted from sea or sky, but he manages to get on the leeward side of the boathouse for a reprieve. It’s not much of one but he’ll take it. There’s no door on the short side, and the icy rain is back in his face the moment he rounds the corner with the old pier. He slaps his hand against a cold paned window, barely avoiding cutting his hand on the sharp broken end of the center bar. Dean tries the slippery knob on the white door, streaked with ages of dirt and salt crust. It’s old and solid and it won’t budge. His other hand aches from clutching the can, fingers cramping as they grasp over the top to keep the chunk of teal glass from falling out.

 

Dean yanks and shoves and the door doesn’t move. He leans into it and grunts, water running into his eyes as it creaks. He leans back, pushes off his back foot and slams his shoulder into the old wood and it hurts. There’s a _crack_ and he’s inside.

 

There’s the sound of water dripping, of the muffled rain on the roof and wind against the walls. Coming in from outside, shakily pushing the door shut behind him, the interior of the boathouse is too dim to make out at first. Very faint light filters down from old holes, and Dean had somehow forgotten the center of the structure was nothing but empty space over water he can’t see into, can barely see across to the opposite wall.

 

It’s like he remembers and it isn’t. There’s something inside, in the air. Maybe it is fear, because last time he was in here, he _knew_ he was alone.

 

The rafters are still there, old studs reaching up to the crossbeams. The bare inner walls moan a little, the roof leaks, rain patters against what’s left of the windows. Dean’s eyes adjust more, the big old doors on the west side rattling on the single chain that keeps them shut against the push and pull of the sea.  The sound of the storm seems to fade, as the water in the dug-out laps against the interior pilings, rising and falling, hiding something in the shallow center of the boathouse.

 

It’s like he remembers, except for the pile of things that weren’t there the last time Dean was here:

 

Shells, of different sizes. A piece of strange black plastic that came from—something, a broken oar maybe, with a reflective stripe. What looks like a big lava rock next to a dented soda can with the brand still visible, and—bottle caps, of all things, rusted and worn and bent.

 

Dean’s eyes rove over all of it, and the tension starts to leave him, and the not-fear is weirdly overtaken by the not-safe that somehow evokes the briefest feeling of shelter, of respite, however tenuous.

 

Amidst the pile are chunks of rough glass, too big or too sharp or too dull. They don’t compare to the teal piece in the can, the brighter, smoother ones in his kitchen.

 

Dean stands, catching his breath, and he reaches into the pocket of the hoodie. His hands are so numb that he doesn’t realize he’s cut one until he sees the blood, and that’s after he’s already put the chunks of glass next to the pile. He looks at his hand, the cut along the outside of his index finger, a raw flap of skin at the knuckle. It looks like it should hurt.

 

Dean holds out the can in his hand, sees how shiny it is, how relatively unbent. Blood slowly slides down his other hand, a drop falling to the creaky wood beneath his feet and maybe into the water beneath that.

 

There’s a sound in the water and he whips his head around but there’s only a suggestion of a ripple, quickly overtaken by the ones coming from the moving doors. Even though Dean can’t see into the dark water, he can see bubbles, dissipating and small, and somehow…somehow he _knows._

 

He’s not sure _what_ he knows, and maybe he shouldn’t be standing so close to the water as the not-safe slides away, the dark water in the center yawning as the walls seem to lean and the walkway seems to narrow. Dean’s bleeding hand pings, finally, and he reaches behind him to fumble slickly at the door.

 

The wind buffets him, but it feels more like seaspray than rain. It feels so he goes back around to the lee side of the house, over the wobbly part of the deck on less-than-steady knees until it’s back to broken wood on semisolid ground. Dean reaches for his hood and tugs at it, but it’s wet and he probably bleeds on it as he rounds the corner back towards the cove and the way home. He’s careful as he clambers back down the short rocks to the beach, the boathouse hidden again behind him. He looks up once he’s got his footing and there’s something dark in the corner of his eye towards the sea—

 

There, on a sandy spot between gray rocks and a scrubby bush, is the seal.

 

Dean stops.

 

He’s not frozen, he just…doesn’t feel the need to move. The storm is still. It’s present, somehow, heavy and waiting, but the thunder’s more distant, like it’s higher up, farther away. The seal’s at the waterline, and Dean can’t quite wrap his head around how _large_ it appears this close. Despite being all the more real and immediate it’s somehow less intimidating than before, under the bright gray of outside.

 

There’s nowhere for Dean to go but back up the cove, because the sea and seal are to his left, the narrow strip of beach along the cove to his right, and his home’s across the sea dead ahead. The seal doesn’t make a move, just sort of raised up on its front, not like TV, no bent—not paws, not fins—flippers, it’s flippers are tucked under its bulk and its head is up. It’s just—looking at him. He realizes it’s breathing hard, mouth a little open but not enough to see inside. It almost looks a little…startled, and Dean suddenly gets the sense it’s too tired to move.

 

It’s strange, seeing it like this. It doesn’t look like he expected it to, less upright than what his mind’s eye remembers.

 

Not that he expected to ever meet a seal, face-to-face. Definitely not one that was maybe leaving random things at his house and made him feel very…weird. At this moment of mutual staring, Dean doesn’t feel afraid. Instead, he looks at the seal more closely. Its eyes are black, no distinction of iris or pupil, no whites. Just—big and wet and dark, somehow expressive. Its body is as long as he thought, hell, this thing is easily ten feet, maybe more, and it must weigh something like—Dean has no idea, but it’s at least a few hundred pounds. He thinks about it in comparison to the size of his truck. Maybe a quarter ton.

 

Jesus.

 

Its skin is strange, slick-looking but different in places, and he remembers the odd two-toned appearance when he thought it was dead on the beach. Maybe it has fur, and it’s like an otter or something, slicked down when wet. He thinks he sees—scars, maybe, lines in the skin. It’s strange, it’s wet like it dragged itself out of the water and Dean wonders if it was trying to avoid him, in the boathouse. It doesn’t make sense, because why would it have come ashore here? There’s nowhere else for it to go except back out to sea.

 

The seal stays where it is, and pants. It regards Dean, but doesn’t move, and Dean can see lines under its eyes, as they shift and look him over. Huffing breaths coming from what sound like big lungs.

 

It looks…weary.

 

He has an absurd desire in his belly to talk to it, to… _ask_ it. Ask if it’s been leaving stuff, if it brought the can.

 

If it’s okay.

 

He stands there.

 

The seal sits there.

 

The wind keeps blowing, he’s cold and wet, and somewhere, thunder rolls.

 

Dean cautiously reaches up to wipe at his face, wary of startling the animal, when there’s a weird, haunting sort of _moan_ in the distance, from the sea. The seal turns its head and Dean starts himself at the movement, as a strange, tripping trill that dips down into another deep moan shivers through Dean’s spine.

 

It’s loud and resonant but Dean swears the seal’s flippers kind of curl to grip the sand, they’re jointed like fingers, and it’s not looking at Dean. The sound came from—Dean warily scans the breakers and follows the seal’s own eyes as they move in its head.

 

The seal loudly blows out its nose, and Dean jumps. The seal shakes its head a little and snorts, and Dean remembers that this is a massive animal that _probably_ can’t move that fast on land but isn’t something he can speak to (what the hell was he thinking?) and he skids one foot backwards in the sand when something _roars._

Dean’s legs and arms do something jerky and he stumbles and the seal in front of him fumbles too, weird ripples down its body like it’s a waterbed with a head. It’s a dumb image but in a split-second it’s what his mind comes up with, and he realizes the big eyes are just as frightened as his own because it wasn’t the seal that made the noise.

 

Movement, there’s movement and Dean turns back towards his house to see something he never thought he would in his life.

 

Bursting forth in a show of spray is something huge and dark and angry, flashes of big bright teeth. It’s easily twice the size of the animal next to Dean, and it’s moving _fast._

 

Dean has a childhood flashback to Attenborough’s hunting whales, black and white and implacable. The seal starts moving too, and Dean’s feet don’t know where the hell to take him. The thing is splashing through the surf and it’s not a whale but another seal bearing down on them both, undulating in a strange way that zaps the lizard part of Dean’s brain. It’s ungainly but there’s scary speed and malevolence behind it and it trumpets again, big flippers looping forward as it swings its huge head. Froth streaks from its mouth to land against its slick and silver skin, spots running down the sides as those giant flippers shove it forward. A lot of muscle ripples under its smooth body and harmless jiggly waterbed-with-head flies out of Dean’s mind.

 

Dean stumbles back towards the wall of the boathouse as the smaller seal _wiggles_ and moves at least a meter in a moment, suddenly in front of Dean and right in the path of the big bastard. Dean doesn’t know what to do. Things seem to slow down and all he can see are black, mean eyes and a massive maw filled with giant teeth.

 

Dean pulls his arm back and throws the can as hard as he can.

 

The big seal swings its head into the throw and the can bounces off and it just keeps coming as the silvery can spins away into the surf. It makes a higher noise, loud and painful to Dean’s ears, tall canines bared in a mouth that’s almost the length of its head.

 

Dean’s foot catches on a root or a rock and he stumbles, windmilling his arms, and there’s a brownish blur as the first seal slips further in front of Dean and then it’s going for the big one, a freakish side-to-side _snaking_ and Dean thinks its mouth is open but it doesn’t make a noise.

 

Christ. The big fucker’s going to _kill_ it. Dean thought this seal— _his_ seal was big but there’s no way, not with that mass and those teeth and the _anger._

 

The seals are between him and home, and there’s likely more than fifteen hundred pounds of flesh about to meet in front of him. Dean’s not proud, but he’s small and human and he turns to run for the boathouse.

 

There’s another loud, angry roar behind him, and then something like a scream, a sound Dean knows he never wants to hear again. It’s drowned out by sudden thunder as the sky opens up again, and he hits the natural wall between the low beach and possible safety. His cut hand stings as he grasps at the wet rocks, pulling himself up and over until he can see the boathouse with new rain and stinging spray in his eyes.

 

Dean hauls himself to his feet and runs until his boots hit boards, and then skids around to the white door and bangs it open. The pile of things is still there, and the walls judder as another peal of thunder shakes the cove.

 

Pieces of glass, too small, too light. Soda cans. Random plastic. Lava rock. There’s the lava rocks, a couple chunks of them, and they look less worn but Dean picks one up and it’s surprisingly light—he forgot they weighed almost nothing, if he’s ever actually held lava rock before in his life. It’s swiss-cheesed with tiny holes, rough and useless.

 

The boathouse doors shudder as something big slams into them from outside, and Dean slaps a hand against a shaky wall, keeping away from the pit. Foamy ripples move towards him, and Dean wonders if the bastard can’t fit underneath like the other seal must have. He looks around frantically, there’s nothing here, not an old oar or piece of lumber, nothing. The boathouse is an empty shell.

 

The doors bang again and bow inward with an ominous snapping sound, straining against the chain. Dean spits a curse in frustration and dashes back to the door.

 

The rain pelts him outside and the doors bang again, the entire boathouse shaking behind him. Dean runs up the spit of land until he hits the rocky ground again, and he just knows he can’t take the beach. It’s too narrow, and the storm and the tide would make him easy pickings and there’s no way Dean would survive a close-up with the big asshole.

 

Dean thinks about the shiny can, spinning off into the surf. He thinks about the other seal, about how weirdly it moved and put itself _between_ Dean and what had to mean death, if not severe injury.

 

His stomach in his feet, he climbs until he finds the dirt track leading into the woods, away from the sea, and starts the long jog back home.

 

 

 

**FIVE: Wrath of the Protector**

 

He’s wet, and he’s shivering cold, and his hands are so numb he can’t feel the cut one.

 

Dean stumbles into his back door and tracks sand and mud all the way to the bathroom, and turns on the hot water with muscles aching in his forearms. He struggles to strip his soggy clothing and has to sit on the side of the bath to get his boots off, and then he gets himself under the water.

 

He stays there too long, as the hot water runs down in the tank, but even when it runs cooler it still feels so much warmer than outside. He thinks he’s okay, that he’s not in actual danger, but he makes himself turn on the stove for hot soup as soon as he gets out, and bundles up in long PJs and a heavy sweater, wool socks.

 

If he had energy, or accessible firewood, he’d make a fire. Instead, he stands next to the stove, arms tucked around his body, and watches the pan.

 

He can’t help but think about the seal.

 

He should have gotten into his truck. He should have gotten _something,_ his rifle, a fucking shovel, something.

 

He should go back.

 

The storm is heavy and angry and he didn’t close all the shutters and he can hear some banging against the house. He hopes it stays on until he can get to it.

 

He doesn’t _think_ he was hypothermic, but Dean tells himself he wasn’t in any shape to go back outside. It’s edging towards afternoon, and after the shower sparked painful feeling back into his limbs, he thinks he needs to go back. Take the truck and make the trip around the cove and to the old barn, park and hike to the boathouse, and see what he can of the beach.

 

He has to.

 

Dean’s stupid for leaving, stupid for thinking of going back. Stupid, maybe, for putting himself in that position in the first place. Maybe seal’s don’t hoard things, or if they do he stumbled across not the smaller seal’s hoard but that goddamn sea-dragon’s, and—

 

His house isn’t far from the beach, and that big bastard could come here.

 

Dean has no idea if it actually _would,_ but he has little doubt that it could heave itself up the porch stairs and slam his doors down like they were tissue paper.

 

He remembers its teeth. Its nasty little eyes. How _mean_ it was.

 

He left it back there. He left the other seal back there, and somehow he _knows_ the pile wasn’t a hoard, that the other pieces of glass were rejects because they weren’t pretty enough, sees the shiny can spinning again in his mind’s eye.

 

That beautiful teal piece of glass is gone, now, and Dean left the seal behind with that mean son of a bitch that tried to ram down the entire boathouse and now Dean is angry.

 

He’s stupid and angry and doesn’t know what he’s doing, but he sucks down too-hot soup, pulls his wet boots on over layers of dry socks. He loads his rifle for what good it’ll do and tosses a mostly-empty box of ammo onto the passenger side of his truck and cranks the engine.

 

\- -

 

Dean drives too fast, over the paved road into the deeper woods between him and the barn. It loops around the cove, and he can’t see the beach from where he is. Even looking out across the cove from his house was just gray rain and the hint of the barn in it somewhere, the grayish box of the boathouse all but invisible on its little spit.

 

Dean drives too fast over the dirt road leading to the barn, tires kicking up mud and slipping. He still has no idea what he’s going to do, what he _can_ do. If they’re even still there, if he’s walking into something he doesn’t understand and doesn’t have any part of.

 

They’re _seals._ Animals he knows next to nothing about. Yet—

 

The can spins, in his mind.

 

He keeps driving too fast.

 

\- -

 

The storm dies down just as he approaches the barn, and for some reason the way it just kind of fades makes Dean very uneasy. There’s still something in the air, not just that tug in the pit of his stomach that wasn’t fear but something else. Something that tells him he shouldn’t have run, that he should have _done_ something even though he doesn’t know what.

 

He has to hike once he hits the barn, because the rest of the dirt road’s washed out and it’s treacherous even in good weather. It hasn’t been maintained since the property was long abandoned, but his boots and legs are good enough, and he’s got gloves on and his one hand’s a little awkward because he wrapped gauze around it, but he puts one foot in front of the other, rifle shells in his pocket and the gun in his arms. He hopes his truck won’t sink into the sandy mud and then puts the thought out of his mind.

 

The clouds hang, but the rain only patters here and there. The wind’s almost holding its breath, the only constant the still-angry sea, churning louder somehow with the rain and thunder gone.

 

The boathouse is there, the white door hanging partly open. Dean can’t see the sea-side from the trail, can’t see down the rocky drop to the beach on the cove-side where he last saw the seals. He cautiously gets to the half-buried decking, and walks back in the direction of his house.

 

The sea in the cove is unsettled, the beach stretching long between here and home. There’s nothing on it but slowly rising tide, no sign of anything long and dark.

 

Dean scans the sand and the waves, but he doesn’t see anything.

 

The white door creaks as he pushes it, partly off its hinges. The boathouse creaks quietly, ripples shushing inside. The doors are bashed inward and hang against the chain. Broken timbers hanging loose, arm-length splinters floating in the center of the room. The sea washes in and out of the gap, almost lazily pushing the debris around for all it crashes about outside.

 

The pile of things is still there, undisturbed but for what Dean picked at. There’s nothing else in the boathouse.

 

The water laps as floating wood gently knocks against the pilings, and Dean stands there for a time, at a loss.

 

\- -

 

He braves the rocky edge but doesn’t go down to the beach, the tide coming in too high. It licks at the cliffs, and what beach the cove has will be underwater in under an hour. Dean vainly looks at the dark shallows, the breakers still foamy, and sees nothing.

 

His steps are heavy on the way back to the truck. The engine turns over and he gets the heat on. He secures the gun and a couple shells fall out of his pocket when he buckles his belt, so he awkwardly bends and fishes them out of the footwell and puts them and the rest into the beat-up cardboard box on the seat next to him. He rests his gloved hands on the wheel, one puffed and awkward, as the truck heats up again.

 

He glances across the cove and can see his house, now that the weather’s cleared, and as he looks there’s a distant rumble of thunder.

 

He puts the truck in low gear and carefully backs out of where he stopped, and the tires do sink and struggle but she finds her footing and pulls them both out of the mud, onto the rest of the old dirt track. It’s narrow but the land isn’t, and he’s able to turn around where it gets rocky again and point back up the track towards the road, towards home.

 

\- -

 

The clouds get lower and a mist falls in the forest as he drives. By the time he’s home the rain’s falling again, much gentler and steadier, with small huffs of wind off the sea. Dean gets himself inside, unloads the rifle, and leaves the box of ammo on the counter next to the fridge, just in case. He props the rifle on the other side, by the short hall to the back door.

 

He sweeps at the mud he’s left all over the floor, and puts his boots in the mudroom. He retrieves his wet clothes and puts them in the washer and drapes his big sweater to dry over a door. He takes another shower, the water warm, and it’s only evening by the time he crawls into bed but he falls into exhausted sleep.

 

\- -

 

A shorter journey, no less hard.

 

A body injured and wearied, a drive pushing him forward.

 

Somewhere not far, not nearly the distance of before, yet seemingly unattainable.

 

He must.

 

He crawls, and he aches, and he swims.

 

A familiar place that he’s never seen, but is home.

 

He coughs water and breathes cold air, and he drags himself, so heavy. Sand, sand and rocks, and he’s so close now.

 

A shadow, somewhere dark.

 

Thunder rumbles, rattling windows, and Dean snuggles tighter under his blankets.

 

Shelter. He’s safe. He’s here.

 

He’s home.

 

He sighs, lets himself fall. Lets himself rest.

 

He must wake. He is so very tired, but he must wake. He did not come this far now to fail.

 

The wind is cold.

 

He closes his eyes, and he falls.

 

\- -

 

Dean jolts himself awake in the middle of the night, and the heat is ticking in the vents. Thunder rolls quietly outside, rain on the roof. It’s a long storm, but still gentler than before. The wind’s picked up again, but it always does.

 

He closed the shutters this time, so that’s not what woke him. Dean still feels uneasy, and…guilty. He swallows and gets up, pushing his feet into slippers so he can get some water.

 

He’d put the long pajamas back on before bed, and he shuffles down to the kitchen in them, groggy. He feels like he’s had a too-long nap, but not like he can go back to bed and sleep. It’s pitch-dark outside, the wind making an eerie sound over the walls. Dean thought he’d get used to it, over time, but he never really has.

 

He makes tea, hot and bitter, and sips it in the kitchen. The mug warms his wrapped hand as he looks out the back door, though he can’t see a thing.

 

The windchime sings.

 

\- -

 

Dean makes himself get up when it’s light out, so he won’t sleep half the day. He doesn’t have a schedule, but he wants to—he wants to check the beach at low tide. Maybe it’s stupid but he can’t help but feel like he’s _failed_ somehow. It’s dumb but it’s a strong feeling, one that hasn’t left his gut since the first pull, since the piece of teal glass in the sand.

 

He puts heavy sweats on over his pajama bottoms and a Henley over his top, shoving the sleeves up to his elbows because he’d cranked the heat in the house. He changes the bandage on his hand and takes the time to clean it again, just in case he messed it up leaving it wrapped like he did so long.

 

He only has two packets of enough gauze in an ancient first-aid kit, everything else inside it long expired. He still uses the iodine wipe, and it doesn’t sting like he expected it would. It does _stink_ and discolor his skin and fingers, though.

 

Dean snaps the metal kit closed, fiddles with the little clasps. He should go to the store, get a new one, or get the supplies to restock this one.

 

He wears the same wool socks, and figures he’ll get to laundry in a bit. After all, it’s a Thursday.

 

Dean boots up his chuggy laptop and gets into his email, and looks at the one from Sam that he hasn’t responded to.

 

 _No, Dean, seals don’t_ eat people. _Seriously?_

 

There’s more to it than that, but Dean doesn’t care right now. He types and lists question after question— _what are the giant seals with spots, did you find out if they hoard things, do species of seals fight with each other, how fast can they move on land,_ on and on, and he scrubs a hand down his face. Maybe he should just call.

 

Maybe he should get less shitty internet and do some research on his own.

 

He should call.

 

He’s written some fumbling lines about the big seal and what happened, or almost happened in the surf by the boathouse, but still. What can he say? The big asshole seal was totally attacking him? It was gonna kill him? Maybe it wasn’t going to _eat_ him, but that’s worse, because in his gut he absolutely knew that bastard wanted him dead.

 

It wasn’t even the same thing as a charging bear. It was—malevolent.

 

He almost wants to ask something else.

 

If other seals defend people.

 

He feels stupid and guilty at once, and he wants to delete and rewrite or maybe scrap this altogether. He means to hit _Save_ and clicks _Send_ on accident and says “Shit.”

 

He can’t bring the email back, so instead he brings up his browser and starts looking through low-resolution images again, careful with what he clicks since they load so slow.

 

Spots. Big, with spots. And huge teeth. He remembers the skull pictures, but he only remembers the giant canines and it looks like a lot of seal skulls come with pronounced canines. Not as big as the giant seal’s, but it doesn’t narrow it down.

 

Turns out a lot of seals have spots, too. His net’s too slow and his search skills are subpar because he’s not searching right or something—

 

There’s a trilling noise that makes him jump. His phone’s ringing in the bedroom.

 

Dean pushes back from the desk and trips a little over the chair getting to the bedside table. He picks up the little phone and doesn’t recognize the number on the outside screen. He flips it open with a hesitant “Hello?”

 

“Dean?”

 

Dean blinks, and swallows.

 

“Sam?”

 

“Are you okay?”

 

Dean blinks again, a few times, and squints out at the bright sunshine through his bedroom window. “Uh. Yeah, I—how—are you okay?”

 

“Dean, the seal _attacked_ you?”

 

Dean walks back to his laptop and sits on the creaky chair. “There are two of them, Sam,” he says, and suddenly, now of all times, his mind replays the way the big animal had moved, its mouth huge and open, coming for him. When he looks down at his injured hand, it’s shaking.

 

“Dean, are you _okay?”_

Dean can’t answer right off, and all he can think is how close his back door is to the beach, how fucking stupid he was to go back out there with a rifle against something of that size, of how fast it was.

 

“It. It was so _big,_ Sammy,” he croaks, and he feels so stupid, so stupid. His nose burns and he squeezes his eyes shut. His little brother’s voice is so calm, so grown up. So patient and yet so worried.

 

“Are you at home?”

 

“Yeah,” he whispers, squeezing his band hand, trying to center himself.

 

“What happened?”

 

Dean tells him.

 

He tells him about the beach glass, about following it to the boathouse. About seeing the pile of stuff, and going outside, and seeing the seal. His seal. How it just…looked at him, its face and body weirdly mobile, and how the big bastard burst out of the surf and tore up the beach, roaring.

 

“It…roared?”

 

Dean’s narrative chokes off, because Sam sounds skeptical, and he feels his back coming up, his stomach turning. It was _real,_ it _happened_ and he was scared shitless.

 

 _“Yes,_ Sam, it fucking—it was _loud_ as fuck and scared the shit outta me. It was—it was so _fast_ and the other seal like, _slithered_ and got between us, I swear it got between us and they went for each other and I fucking ran into the boathouse and it still _tried to knock the fucking doors down.”_

 

Dean has to stop to breathe, and the line crackles between them. He thinks he hears Sam mutter “Jesus.”

 

“The doors were hanging on just the chains when I checked it out after,” Dean says, and Sam inhales.

 

“You went _back?”_

Dean doesn’t know what to say. The smaller seal tried to save him? He wasn’t afraid of it? It meant him no harm, and was maybe bringing him stuff?

 

The shiny can spins through his mind’s eye.

 

“Sam,” Dean says, and his hand hurts from squeezing the seat of the chair between his knees. “The smaller one—it was different, like a different species, it—I think it’s been bringing stuff. Here. To the house.”

 

“Dean, wait,” Sam says, and Dean can hear him typing. He must be at work. Sam has an important job doing his marine biologist shit, conservation and oil spills and all that shit, and Dean thinks of the plastic debris and soda cans. Of beach glass.

 

“Check your email,” Sam says, snapping Dean’s mind back to the call. He was thinking—hoping—that the other seal was still—that it was okay.

 

Dean twists in the chair and cranks on the internet, and the modem makes its weird fax-submarine noises and he can hear Sam snort.

 

“Dude,” Sam says. “You know you can tether your net to your phone, right? I mean, you can get phone service that has that.”

 

Dean doesn’t respond, too busy pulling up his email and looking at the picture that’s loading, strip by strip. It’s a picture, and just a headshot, and it’s on some kind of snowy ice background but the mouth is huge and so are the teeth and maybe Sam could have found one where the fucking mouth wasn’t open.

 

“That’s. That’s it,” Dean says, and he makes himself take a breath. Silver, spotted, dark on top. Big, big teeth. He clenches his jaw and looks at it again, and he thinks of beach glass and gets angry.

 

Sam is quiet for a time. “That’s a leopard seal, Dean,” he says, and he doesn’t sound mocking or skeptical this time. “They, uh. They can get around a thousand pounds, maybe more, and they can. They can move pretty fast on land, for short bursts.”

 

Dean stares at the image. “Yeah,” he breathes.

 

“I’m—” Sam starts, and leaves it there. “What did the other seal look like?”

 

Dean closes the email so he doesn’t have to look at the picture anymore. “Uh,” he says. “Smaller? Roundish, but long? Brownish, I guess.” He’s thirsty. He gets up to walk downstairs to the kitchen. “It was big though, I mean—before I saw the other one, I thought _this_ one was big. And it is, I mean—shit. Sam—do you think—” Dean pauses at the foot of the stairs.

 

“Do you think it’s okay?”

 

Sam is quiet. “I don’t know, Dean. Leopard seals—they prey on other seals, sometimes.”

 

Dean goes to the kitchen and gets a glass. He pours himself water, and he drinks it.

 

“Dean?”

 

He puts the glass down, and looks out the window towards the sea.

 

“Dean?”

 

“It brought me stuff, Sam,” Dean starts, and then his eyes look at the windchime twirling in the breeze.

 

The can, the beach glass, that’s one thing. This…is something else.

 

“Sam,” he says. “You say the—leopard seals, they don’t eat people, right?”

 

“Well,” Sam says. “I mean. There are records of rare attacks on humans, but it’s usually territorial. And—shit, Dean, they’re _Antarctic seals._ Not that it couldn’t have traveled, but—they don’t usually seek people out, you’ve gotta piss one off inside its own territory or something.”

 

Dean frowns, and plays with the lip of the glass. “Aren’t we—I mean, isn’t my place close to one of the arctic circles?”

 

“There’s only one Arctic Circle, Dean,” Sam says, his smarty-pants voice, and all at once Dean feels like they’re kids again and he wants to smack Sam on the back of his head because _he knew that._

 

“Shut up,” he mutters, and looks at the windchime.

 

“Check your email again,” Sam says, “Look at all the ones I’m sending. I’m doing one pic at a time for your connection, but—the first ones might be off, because I was looking at arctic species, so tell me when I’m getting warmer.”

 

Dean receives Sam’s emails one after another, but the pictures take forever to load. “No,” he says of the first two. “Too small. _Too_ round.” There are a couple that are pretty cute, actually, and one with a scrunchy face that looks grumpy and kind of lifts his mood a little.

 

Dean suddenly remembers the pictures of skulls he was looking at, and words come out of his mouth before he knows what he’s saying. “Hey, are there any with weird teeth?”

 

Dean never saw inside his seal’s mouth, but he remembers the dents in the can, and his mind is putting something together. It just needs another nudge.

 

He can hear Sam typing. “Yeah, actually, there’s—here, I just sent something, lemme know when you open it.”

 

It loads, and loads, and loads. It’s a skull and not even to the teeth yet, so Dean has to wait—

 

 _“Yes,”_ he says, sitting upright and leaning close to the screen. The teeth are strange, pronged and curved, and Dean remembers this very image from his searches, and he hasn’t seen inside his seal’s mouth but he _knows._ The can, something else, maybe, that weird feeling that’s never left his gut—he knows.

 

“That’s it, Sam. That’s it.”

 

“It’s a crabeater,” Sam says. “The other one, then. They have pretty unique teeth. I mean, even leopard molars look a little similar, but crabeaters are the only ones with teeth like this.”

 

There are still big canines, but the weird teeth follow that and go all the way back into the jaw. Dean’s tongue is absently tracing his own molars when Sam sends another email and Dean loads it. There’s a long, roundish brownish seal lounging on an ice floe and Dean sits back in the chair kind of hard.

 

“That’s it,” Dean says, and somehow, weirdly, the feeling in his gut swings into loss, just as he has the oddest sensation of unfamiliarly warm waters over his skin.

 

“Fuck,” he mutters, and he can hear Sam say his name. “I hope it’s okay,” he says, looking out his window. He’s on the wrong side of the house to see the chime, and he’s on the upper floor. It’s just sky and distant trees towards the road.

 

“Dean,” Sam says quietly. “You said it brought things to your house? Aside from that pile of stuff in the other place?”

 

Dean stands up, and feels kind of tired. “Yeah,” he says, and absurdly he feels bad for throwing the can. He thinks he’d do it again, if he had to, but the can is gone now. He goes back down to the kitchen again, and looks at the line of small chunks of beach glass on the island.

 

“What did it bring?”

 

Dean pulls the phone away from his face and fumbles the camera on and snaps a picture. He realizes he has no idea how to text while he’s on a call, so he tells Sam to hang up.

 

“Dean—”

 

“Hang on, I’m sending you a picture.”

 

Sam huffs but he hangs up, and Dean hopes he’s not about to text a landline. There was no extension, and it’s not the number at the end of Sam’s other email. Sam would’ve stopped him, anyway.

 

His phone vibrates and he picks it up.

 

“Wow,” Sam says. “Did it leave all those at once?”

 

Dean tells Sam about the can, and then about the glass. He pushes open his back door and the storm door whacks shut behind him.

 

The storm has passed, and the wind has settled into more of its usual. The sun’s out, a little bright after the grayness, and the wind’s somehow crisper, cleaner.

 

The windchime tinkles.

 

“This showed up last week,” he says, and he realizes it’s a week to the day. “Out of nowhere.”

 

“What did?”

 

Dean reaches out and touches the little spinny thing on the end of the windchime’s string. “A chime,” he says, letting it twirl off his fingers. “Hung up on a nail.”

 

Sam’s quiet for a long time, and Dean pulls the phone away from his face to check it.

 

“Dean,” Sam starts, and Dean braces for something, he’s not sure what. “Do you…want me to look into this?”

 

There’s something there, something cautious, and Dean thinks he knows what Sam’s asking.

 

Dean looks out at the sea, alone on his worn deck with the bad boards, and thinks maybe now there’s no point.

 

“If you want,” he says, voice falling a little flat. It’s not that he’s angry. Not really, not now.

 

Dean finds his tongue running over his teeth again, and he looks at the chime. He…remembers something. The seal’s tired eyes, the way it put itself between Dean and the big one.

 

Dean thinks he had a dream last night, and as he looks at the chime, he thinks it wasn’t the first.

 

“Dean?”

 

Dean stares at it, at the sun reflecting off the metal cylinders, listening to the tones as the middle piece strikes them in turn.

 

“Dean?”

 

Strange, warm waters. The comfort of the cold. A long, long journey, finally over.

 

“Sam,” Dean says, “I think I’ve been having dreams,” and he can hear Sam take a breath on the other end of the line.

 

\- -

 

“If you’re sure,” Sam says. He can’t help but sound hesitant. He’s already got a few tabs open, and he looks around. There’s nobody else in the lab today, and Charlie already knows, but it’s more the person on the other end of his call that he’s concerned with.

 

“Yeah.” Dean’s voice is rough as ever, coming across the miles, bounced from tower to tower. “I, uh. I’d appreciate it.”

 

“Okay,” Sam says. He’d offered to look into it, and Dean’s okay with it, or at least he’s consenting, so—that’s that. “I’ll let you know what I find.”

 

“Okay.”

 

“Dean—”

 

“Yeah.”

 

Sam wants to say a lot of things, and he’s not sure they’re all okay to say. The rift between them is a very old one, and this is touching the very subject that obsessed their father, that strained the bonds of family until something snapped.

 

“…be careful,” Sam finally says.

 

Dean sighs heavily at the other end of the line. “Yeah,” he says, and then, quieter, “Thanks, Sammy.”

 

The ‘Sammy’ seems to catch them both off-guard, and Sam’s own voice is a little rougher than he means it to be.

 

“Yeah,” he says. “Take care.”

 

Dean makes a sound of acknowledgement, and there’s another beat of air where Sam can hear the wind and he thinks the sounds of the chime before Dean hangs up.

 

Sam lets his hand fall from his ear, and mouses over a couple of the tabs. He’s got some basic facts, and he’s not sure where to start. There’s a lot going on in the back of his mind right now, about his brother and their relationship, but the tingle of _discovery_ is before him and there may be something after Dean that could cause him real harm, so he puts down his phone and his fingers start moving over the keys and they don’t stop.

 

 

 

**SIX: You’re Gonna Need a Bigger Porch**

 

The phone’s warm in his hand, and Dean idly stands at the edge of his porch on a relatively-stable deck board, looking out at the sea and letting the wind play with his hair, play the chime.

 

Sam’s a smart cookie, and when it comes to—unusual things, he’s smarter than most.

 

Hell, they both are.

 

Well, maybe Dean isn’t as _smart_ as Sam, but. He remembers.

 

They both loved watching Attenborough and others, old-school Discovery Channel and big, heavy books with color plates of dinosaurs, ocean creatures, maps of the rainforest. Their dad encouraged their thirst for knowledge of the natural world, but he had a mind for something else.

 

Dean looks out at the waves and remembers their father leaning over heavy, old books. Black-and-white illustrations, strange languages and symbols, covers made of leather, and of something _else._ Concepts that fell outside the natural world. Dean remembers watching those nature shows in different motels, reading those books in different libraries and schools. He remembers hot and dry places, hot and humid places, places in between. He remembers Dad going out at night and sometimes not coming back till the next day, of cooking out of cans for him and Sammy, of sometimes cereal for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

 

He remembers Dad’s tired eyes, his tired smile, the slope of his shoulders. He remembers Dad chasing something, always chasing something and never finding it, of his strange warnings and dire orders.

 

He remembers not wanting to believe in something that could do what it did to his family, that could tear a father away from his sons in pursuit of his long-gone wife, of their mother they lost so young.

 

He knows Dad didn’t believe it was just a fire, and trusted him. He trusted his father when he told him to watch over little Sammy, had to trust himself to grow up in a moment and be what he needed to be to take care of them both. And sometimes to take care of Dad, too, when he got sad.

 

As Dean got older, he recognized his father’s obsession for what it was, and he resented the hell out of it. His father had two sons that loved him right in front of him and he was never home, and there was never _home._ Home was gone. Home was far behind, and instead it was motels, apartments, rooms and rooms and rooms but never many of them at the same time.

 

Sammy wanted to go to school, and he loved his books. Dean remembers yelling at him, once, when he caught him looking at one of Dad’s books, of how angry he got and how loud he yelled. He remembers Sammy’s open, hurt face, surprised tears, and later, anger.

 

Sam got older and he did look at Dad’s books, and he found his own and he didn’t tell Dean or Dad, but they found out. Dean’s the one that _told_ Dad, and Sam’s never forgiven him for it.

 

Sam wanted to _help,_ and instead their dad blew up, he yelled and got loud and Dean thinks he was worried, at the end of it all, worried that maybe Sam would end up like him. Dean knows his Dad knew better, but he thinks he also understands.

 

He still doesn’t quite know how he feels about all of it, but he knows, even with Dad gone, he hasn’t forgiven him for how he yelled at Sam.

 

And Sam—

 

Sam left when he could. Dean didn’t know, for a long time, what it was Sam did. Eventually, it was Dad that showed Dean a simple postcard, a picture of the University of California, Santa Barbara and fish and coral and something about marine biology and the scrawled words _I’M OKAY_ and below that, _LOVE YOU._

It was addressed to D & D Winchester, and Dean has no idea how Sam got it to Dad, into one of his post office boxes. He must have dug more into Dad’s stuff than either of them knew. It was Dad who found Dean, because Dean had left too. He’d left and drifted and did odd jobs and eventually found a school that would let him get his GED, and he remembers how much older his dad had looked when he’d tracked him down.

 

He always knew Dad would find him, if he looked. His dad was very good at finding things. His dad had let him go, and Dean isn’t sure to this day how much of what he feels is gratitude and resentment for it.

 

He’s glad Dad got to see Sam’s postcard, before he.

 

Before.

 

Dean had called the University, and they’d found Sam for him, and Sam had come out and stood in a dark suit next to Dean’s ill-fitting, second-hand one, and they hadn’t said much to each other. They’d both looked so different to one another, and they had their own lives now, and Dean remembers Sam being tall and looking painfully like Dad.

 

\- -

 

The sun’s starting to become obscured by hazy gray clouds and Dean’s not as tired as he was yesterday, but it’s still chilly, so he turns to go back inside. He habitually looks down to avoid nail-heads and bad boards, and that’s why he knows the board that just creaked isn’t one he stepped on, nor is it anywhere near his foot.

 

The sea comes in, and it goes out, and a breeze pushes the chime’s little metal sail thing around. Dean looks down, but there’s nothing but darkness between the boards.

 

There’s a sound like sand, and Dean’s mind thinks _raccoon_ or something, maybe a possum. He’s not sure if possums are this far north, though.

 

Dean carefully steps over the boards and to the door, and he goes inside.

 

He puts his phone down and looks at the unloaded rifle, leaning against the fridge.

 

He goes upstairs and gets the heavy sweater and pulls it on.

 

Dean goes out the front door, and he thinks he might be stupid, but he doesn’t take anything else with him. He gives his house a wide berth, at first, looking at the foundation along the side. It’s just concrete, where the wood siding ends, but near the back as the land dips down there’s the crawlspace under the back decking, the old lattice mostly intact on this side of the house, and beat to shit on the sea-side and up one corner.

 

Dean rounds the back end of the house and puts the sea behind him. Had he been paying attention, maybe he would’ve seen the scrapes in the damp sand from the sea, all the way back to the house. Some are blown or washed over, but if something big enough made them, they’d stay for a while.

 

Something like a seal, perhaps, an injured one, going by the lopsidedness of the marks in the sand.

 

Dean falls to his knees in the damp ground and then to his hands, peering underneath in the dark. With the brightness of the day he can’t make anything out, but still his voice gets away from him.

 

“Hel-hello?” he kind of asks, and he clears his throat. “Hello?” He should feel ridiculous, but instead he just feels worried.

 

Nothing leaps out at him, nothing roars its anger, and no possums or raccoons produce themselves. Dean stares stupidly for another moment before he pushes himself up and heedless of potential maneating seals, he hops up the back stairs and over the bad boards and into the house.

 

He gets his flashlight, and his legs start taking him to the bathroom while his torso swings back around to go outside and his arms flail out and catch the doorframe. He spins and pounds up the stairs and grabs the first-aid kit, half-formed thoughts flitting between his ears as he thumps back down and across the kitchen and out the door.

 

He lands in the sand at the foot of the porch steps and slides around to his knees again, and he drops the metal kit with a clatter. He has to click the heavy flashlight twice to get it on, and then he shines it and he’s not sure what he’s seeing.

 

It looks like a mound of sand, blown up under the crawlspace until it built to the very top of it, and it extends for some length—

 

Dean sits back on his ass.

 

It’s a much lighter brown, the seal’s fur, when it’s dry, and his light plays over lines he remembers seeing—scars, maybe—but then he sees that some look wet. The fur looks stained, and when his light shines up to the seal’s head it flinches away, closing its eyes.

 

“Hey, hey,” Dean says, pushing himself down on his front. This thing’s longer than he is, probably three times as heavy if not more, and it’s jammed itself under his porch, just lying on its side.

 

The seal’s head flops down, and Dean mutters “shit” and tries to crawl forwards. Even if it’s not hostile it could roll and crush him, a thought he pushes away as his head comes under the crawlspace and into the damp dark.

 

He calls softly again, not sure why he’s being quiet. He passes the light down its body from its neck, and there are lines that almost look like they’re from claws. Do leopard seals have claws? He wouldn’t be surprised at this point. There are a couple wounds that look pretty intense, at least in length, but there’s nothing actively bleeding. The trails of blood look tacky and sandy, now that he sees them up close, and Dean starts to smell the seal and it finally hits him that he’s within about eight feet of the thing, within its own body length. It’s an animal kind of scent, not one he can really identify, but he can smell wounds, and something not unlike wet dog.

 

He’s careful when he points the light back up to its head, but it’s still on its side, breathing in little huffs.

 

He knows Sam would call him stupid, but Dean crawls under the porch until his entire upper body is in the cramped space, and he’s within arm’s reach and—fuck, the seal is _huge._ Without the even-bigger bastard nearby, in this small space, Dean’s struck anew at the size of this thing.

 

Hoping he’s not about to be rolled over, or have his arm suddenly bitten off, Dean reaches out. His light falls somewhere on its torso, and lying like this, waterbed-with-a-head is apt once again. It’s very…round.

 

Perhaps it’s more streamlined than that, but right now, it’s just kind of limp. At least Dean can hear it breathing.

 

“Hey,” he says again, gently, and his hand makes contact with its body.

 

The fur is so _soft,_ when it’s dry. It’s as velvety as it looks, a little silky, and the seal’s skin is unexpectedly warm. There are coarser hairs, and the ones tacked down with blood are a little crusty. Dean has the briefest thought of diseases and infection before he gently pulls with his palm and shines his light at one of the wounds.

 

The seal makes a noise like a rubbery raspberry, and Dean twitches with it when it moves, but it doesn’t do anything else. “Easy,” he says, “easy,” and then the seal’s rolling over.

 

Dean bites out a curse and scrambles backwards, getting sand on his chin and up one of the legs of his sweats. He pushes out from under the porch and blinks at the too-bright daylight, but stays as low as he can. He squints and shines the flashlight forward, and the seal squints back when he hits it in the face again.

 

“Sorry, sorry,” Dean says, shifting the light down its body, and then he really sees the wounds.

 

“Fuck,” he murmurs, moving the beam along the gashes. Teeth or claws he’s not sure; the leopard seal’s mouth was unreasonably huge. It could be either, maybe, if it even had claws. Dean puts the light up along one of the seal’s flippers, and—they are jointed, they’re like paddle-shaped big hands with elbows (wrists?), and he can see the finger-like structures underneath the fur and webbing. There are small tips of claws poking out the ends, so he’d bet good money the big asshole had some too, probably nasty ones.

 

“You okay?” Dean says, not sure what response he’s expecting. He glances up at the seal, able to see its head in the bounce-off from the flashlight. It looks beat, eyes wet around their edges. The head is very oblong, no visible ears, just some whiskers and the seam of its closed mouth, its tight little nostrils in the rounded snout, and those huge dark eyes.

 

The light’s not the best, but there’s…something, with the seal just regarding him, and Dean looking back. It blinks, once, and it feels significant.

 

Dean shakes himself, and feels—a lot of things. Stupid. Silly. Confused. “Hey, can you—you think you can manage to come out here?”

 

The seal’s nostrils sort of open up and—moosh forward, rounding out as it takes in a deep breath. Its body seems to grow in size, and Dean wonders just how much space its lungs take up. It lets the air back out its mouth, a hot breath that smells like the sea as it washes back out to Dean with surprising force. The seal moves its near flipper, and then it grunts, and starts to turn, to wiggle carefully forward.

 

Shit. It’s moving. It’s coming out.

 

Dean backs up in the sand to give it space, fumbling for the kit. He pulls it to him and sets it out to the side, and then shines his light and tries not to blind the seal.

 

It grunts again, higher and a little pained-sounding, as it moves. It kind of reminds Dean of a lizard, or an alligator, with that side-to-side shuffle. He’s not sure if it’s because it’s wounded, but he remembers that freakish snaking it did before, how different it was from the leopard seal’s movement.

 

“C’mon,” Dean coaxes, and the seal moans a little when one of the broken lattice boards catches on its hide.

 

“Shit, I’m sorry, m’sorry,” Dean says, springing forward. He doesn’t even think, just moves to grab the board and pull it up, yank it out of the way. He doesn’t catch splinters and he doesn’t catch a defensive bite. The seal’s head is nearly the size of his thigh, just about as big around, and the flipper it swings forward is easily the length of his upper leg.

 

“Holy shit,” Dean says, as the rest of the seal’s body hoves laboriously into the light. It collapses with a loud gust of air.

 

There _are_ scars, amidst the gouges. One of the fresh wounds has started bleeding again, and Dean blinks himself into movement. He flicks the catches on the kit and looks for what he can use of the old things—there, hemostat gauze. Maybe expired, but it’s something until he can do better.

 

The first pack he tears open is crackly and dry and useless. The second might be serviceable, and the seal doesn’t react except to hiss as he fumbles to get it over the worst part of the wound. There’s nowhere near enough gauze, but the gel reacts and seals into the grooves of the cut and the wetter patches of fur.

 

Dean hopes it doesn’t stick so bad that it causes an infection, and then he wants to slap himself.

 

There are lots of those iodine swabs, a couple alcohol wipes, but he doesn’t think there’s enough. They’re made for less wound _area_ overall. He thinks. “Stay here,” he says to the seal, and immediately feels stupid. It doesn’t react, and he pushes to his feet and bounds up the stairs and over the bad boards.

 

He dives under the kitchen sink—there, the cleaning stuff he got. There’s vinegar and alcohol, and they’re not something he’d subject the seal to if he can avoid it—cleaners he can’t use, but those rags, they’re terrycloth and sanitized, says so on the bag, so he pulls a couple out, and keeps rummaging.

 

He remembers something in his mind and runs up the stairs a couple at a time, skids into the bathroom and finds a jug of hydrogen peroxide under that sink. It’s old too, but not expired, and it’s what he’s got so down he goes and back out the door.

 

He wets the rag and tears into the iodine wipes. He washes the wounds with the peroxide and they bubble. The seal flinches when he wipes the edges, trying to get the tacky blood and sand off its fur. He’s careful but also firm, and he’s as thorough as he can be. The wounds look and sound painful, but the more he cleans them, the more he sees they aren’t deep, not really. The seal’s skin is layered with fat, and it bleeds, but none of the cuts look like they made it down to muscle.

 

They’re deep, relatively speaking; any one of these on Dean, say across his belly, and he’d probably be gutted. He guesses there’s something to say for being a waterbed with a head.

 

He glances down the seal’s body as he works the last wound on this side. He’s running out of swabs, and the peroxide’s empty. That bastard did a number, all right. He hopes the seal got his own licks in.

 

There’s not enough hemostat gauze, and what’s left is probably shitty anyway. He’s tempted to try and rinse the one patch he put on right back off, but he doesn’t want to start fresh bleeding. He gets to his feet, and the seal lies still, a little shaky. He’s not sure, but it kind of looks underweight. Sort of…flatter, maybe, than it should be. He walks around its front, and looks down the other side—scars, some shallower scratches, but the lion’s share of the wounds are all on the seal’s right side.

 

Leopard’s share. If Dean ever sees that bastard again…

 

Dean gives the seal’s left side a once-over, and looks curiously at the tail-end. The flippers there are pressed together, and it takes a moment for Dean to realize they’re tilted sideways. They remind him of swim fins, facing straight backwards and don’t look like they can swing to the front, not like what Dean remembers from his cartoonish memories. He thinks there’s a little nubbin-tail in between them, but he quickly remembers himself and goes back to the seal’s head.

 

“Hey,” he says, crouching and a little unsure. “You with me?”

 

The seal’s eyes are shut tight, and it doesn’t look like its breathing.

 

Dean hits his knees, and says _“Hey,”_ louder, and before he knows what he’s doing he’s reaching under its jaw with both hands and lifting its head.

 

He thinks it’s going to be very heavy, and he’s surprised when the seal rises with him and opens its eyes. It snorts, loudly, and Dean breathes out. The seal takes in another breath, and then he sees the nostrils close again, and after a moment they go round and it exhales.

 

Dean does too. Maybe they kind of hold their breath even on land, he has no idea. The seal rests a little of its weight and it _is_ heavy. There’s something about the sheer size of this creature with its head in his hands that is so _sad_ Dean’s chest aches with it.

 

He looks down its body at the wounds, watches as it tiredly pulls a flipper forward to help brace itself. It doesn’t raise its chest up, just its neck and head, and it looks right into Dean’s eyes.

 

Dean shivers, a little.

 

There’s no doubt in his mind right then that there’s intelligence in those dark eyes, and that somehow, that same place in his gut knows this is not merely a seal.

 

“Hey,” he eventually says, for the umpteenth time, in a different tone. “You’re safe here.” Dean’s not sure he can make that promise. Yet he knows, in that low place inside, that he means it and that he’ll back it up with everything he has.

 

The seal blinks, once, and it opens its mouth to let out a bone-weary sigh that sounds a lot like relief.

 

\- -

 

There are a few other realities that begin to make themselves apparent:

 

Dean is not equipped for this.

 

His house is not equipped for this.

 

He doesn’t have what he needs (he has no idea what he needs, but he’s sure he doesn’t have it) to care for a wounded marine mammal that likely weighs six hundred pounds.

 

Sam. He needs to call Sam.

 

He’s going for his phone when he thinks he hears something, and he spins around to peer out the back door.

 

The seal’s still there, its head up a little, and it seems to be surveying the beach.

 

Dean opens the back door and pokes his head out, feeling foolish even as he speaks. “Hey, uh, if you. Yanno, if you see something. Holler, or. Whatever.”

 

The seal cranes its head back at an impossible angle, almost upside-down, and it looks at him with round eyes for a moment before they narrow.

 

It’s squinting at him.

 

“Okay,” Dean says, and he goes back inside.

 

\- -

 

“Sam there’s a seal under my porch and it’s at _least_ six hundred pounds maybe more it had wounds from that giant asshole and it’s like, I dunno if it’s in like _distress_ but it’s _hurt_ and I dunno what to do with it.”

 

Sam holds the phone away from his ear for a second, blinking. When Dean winds down, he pulls it back. There’s a lot there and his mind was buried in links and pages and tabs because he thinks he’s found the thread. He blinks, and his brain switches gears and shoves aside everything unimportant _right now._ “Is it bleeding?”

 

“No, not—not badly, I cleaned the big wounds and put some gauze on the one that was.”

 

“The seal _let_ you?”

 

“Yeah, it didn’t—I mean, it’s like it’s _tired,_ I think it was the fight but—you know. The, uh. The swim. The distance.”

 

Dean’s dreams. Sam remembers.

 

“Dean, I think this is something…else, but until we both know you need to stay safe. Crabeaters aren’t aggressive, not really and not outside of their territory or away from pups or whatever—Dean, you need to be smart about this.”

 

“I held its head in my hands, Sam,” Dean says, and for some reason his voice catches all of Sam’s attention, and his mouse cursor hovers over an old link, unmoving. “I. It looked at me. It _looked_ at me, and I dunno, maybe I’m stupid, but. It’s. This is something, Sam.”

 

Sam’s finger clicks, and he looks at his tab on crabeater seals, the natural kind. Maybe six hundred pounds, at the very outside, not usually over eight, nine feet. The seal Dean’s describing is massive for the species, and if his estimation of the leopard seal is correct, that beast is itself legendary.

 

Pieces are slowly clicking into place in the back of his mind, content to be pushed to the sidelines and work on their own as he thinks over his brother’s safety. There’s something in Dean’s voice that makes him realize how hard this is for him, and yet how much he believes what he’s seeing. Dean’s smarter than he’s ever given himself credit for, and he’s already put enough pieces together to be convinced that at the very least, yeah, this is _something._

“Just be careful, Dean,” Sam says, and he’s clicking and scrolling and scribbling in his notepad, squinting at Celtic characters and trying to copy them down with accuracy.

 

“What do I do right now?”

 

Sam blows out a huff of air. “For now? I dunno. If it’s been on a long-ass journey, maybe—feed it.”

 

“Feed. Feed it.”

 

Sam mentally shrugs. “Yeah, I mean, you’ve helped it out, it probably hasn’t eaten anything decent in a while—do you have shrimp or anything?”

 

“Shrimp? No, I—wait, I think I have some frozen fish. Is that—would that be—” Dean trails off, and Sam can hear the distinct sound of a fridge or freezer door opening.

 

“Sure, try the fish. _Thaw_ them first, Dean.”

 

“No shit,” Dean mutters, and Sam hears water start to run.

 

“Call me back if anything goes weird and _be careful,_ okay?”

 

“Yeah,” Dean says, sounding distracted, and he makes a _eugh_ noise. “Thanks, I’ll call you back, but thanks.”

 

There’s fumbling and then the line disconnects, and Sam looks at his phone for a moment before he sets it down and goes back to reading and clicking and scribbling. He’s got something, something in old Scots, words eerily similar but that don’t make any sense. But he knows—he knows he’s getting closer.

 

\- -

 

Fish, he can do fish. Dean has three frozen whole ones he got at a market to be ‘local’ once.  They’re fucking cold, wrapped in paper in a big freezer bag, and he numbs his fingers opening the bag in the sink and unwinding the stuck paper as he tries to keep the phone jammed between his ear and shoulder. _Yes_ he knows to thaw them, Sam, Jesus. He has a split-second vision of tossing the cold hard fish onto the dirt in front of the porch and the seal giving him a _look_ with its unexpectedly expressive face.

 

He doesn’t even know what kind of fish these are but they _stink_ even frozen, and he makes a noise. The fish makes a weird _thunk_ when he drops it into the sink, and it slides up one side stiffly before coming to rest against the paper and plastic of its brethren.

 

He turns the hot water on, and closes his phone with a fishy hand. He grimaces, and grabs the bag and paper and throws it away before he starts digging for disinfectant wipes.

 

Hands warm (and clean), Dean tries not to look at the dead fish floating in hot water in the sink.

 

There are a few recipes in the old cookbook about fish, not that he’s going to _cook_ these right now, but he double-checked on how to thaw them out. He had to avoid either freezing or scalding his hands as he read—a bunch of the recipes were on the same vein, wine, lemon, herbs. Sides varying from rice to potatoes to leeks and crusty breads rich with butter. Dean’s stomach grumbles.

 

It sounds kind of good, but Dean’s missing a lot of the ingredients (the hell is a _leek?)_ and it’s not like he’s doing this for him right now. He’s gonna disinfect the shit outta this sink when he’s done.

 

It takes him too long to realize that the fish thaws too fast and actually kind of cooks under the hot water, so by the time he touches the handle with his again-fishy-hands and gets the temp right, the whole kitchen smells like hot raw fish. At least they’re cleaned.

 

Dean grimaces at his hands and sacrifices a dish towel that he probably should have washed anyway, dusty from disuse, and uses it to open the back doors. He has two fish in one hand, unexpectedly slick, and he’s gripping them tighter than he really wants to, rethinking the whole eating their kind at a later date thing.

 

Dead eyes, and all that.

 

Dean blinks to make his eyes adjust to the outside, and he sees the beach, the sea, and no big lumps of seal.

 

Dean goes down the porch steps, and he crouches. Nothing in the crawlspace, and no obvious marks in the sand to indicate the seal crawled—slithered elsewhere; there is a very obvious lack of quarter-ton plus animal at the back of his house.

 

Dean stands there with the smelly fish, and scans the sea. There are no signs of the big bastard either, and Dean grips the fish tight as he jogs around the far side of the house.

 

He looks in the sand and the dirt, and sees nothing. He checks under his truck, though he quickly realizes the seal probably wouldn’t fit under there without being very visible. He checks the shed, he checks the road, he checks the little drop-offs that lead to the cove.

 

Nothing.

 

He comes back around to the porch deck, and he looks out at the expanse of ocean and wonders, finally, if he’s losing his mind.

 

The windchime tinkles, and his eyes light on it.

 

He didn’t get that. He knows he didn’t get that, and there’s no one else around at all.

 

He knows he called Sam. Hell, Sam called _him._ He knows this.

 

Dean walks back up the porch steps and uses the rag to open the door. It’s fiercely wrinkled from where he’d crushed it in his fist.

 

Dean wraps the fish in plastic wrap and then stuffs them in another freezer bag for the smell, and puts them in the bottom of the fridge. He pulls his sweater over his head and kicks off his shoes. He washes his hands up to the elbows, disinfects the sink and counter, and washes his hands again.

 

He’s standing in his kitchen wondering at the sweeping feeling of loss in his gut when his phone buzzes.

 

“Dean go open your freaking email,” Sam says all at once, and Dean’s legs jerk into motion.

 

Sam’s impatient, excited, and it bleeds into Dean’s veins. He taps his spacebar as the modem pings and pongs as if it’ll make it connect faster. He opens his email and Sam’s sent him a massive wall of text with links and an image attachment and Dean’s eyes fuzz a little.

 

“What the hell is sell-cheese?” he says, trying to make out the word on the screen, repeated over and over: Selchie.

 

Sam’s voice bubbles over the line, almost too fast to follow. “Selkies are another name, more common nowadays, and they haven’t been documented for—for _centuries,_ Dean, this is huge.”

 

Selkies. Supernatural beings that are usually taken advantage of by humans, according to Sam, forced to become their lovers, and Dean can’t reconcile that with the seal he no longer sees outside, or the big bastard that tried to kill them both. That sounds more like ancient mermaids, or sirens, luring sailors to their terrible deaths. Dean clicks the attachment and an old illustration loads painfully slow, and it looks like a half-woman, half-mermaid sort, and she looks angry.

 

Sam pauses for breath, the line crackling between them, and Dean’s dumbass mouth runs away from him.

 

“The—the seal’s not gonna try to hump me, is it?”

 

Sam makes a weird noise and Dean winces, picturing Sam’s palm hitting his forehead. “N—Dean—oh my god.”

 

Dean holds his breath, wanting to ask just what the hell to expect but keeping his mouth shut for fear of saying something stupid when Sam speaks again.

 

“Dean. Selkies take off their skin—their _seal skin_ Dean calm down—and they’re just—they have a human form underneath.”

 

“So. Uh.” The skin thing is a little…yeah. “They take off their skin.”

 

“Uh-huh,” Sam says, sounding like he’s still reading, still researching.

 

“They _take off their skin.”_

 

“Yeah, that’s what I just—oh. You’re weirded out.”

 

Dean blinks. “Uh, _yeah,_ Sam! You’re telling me I’m being stalked by a friggin’ seal that wants to _take off its skin_ and—wait. Why am I seeing a—a selkie? What does it want? Where the hell did the other one come from, is it one too? Why does it wanna kill me?”

 

Dean can actually hear the shrug in Sam’s voice, and for a painful moment he can see it in his mind’s eye, his little brother grown up.

 

“There’s a lot of lore, but…it’s a lot of the same stuff. Mostly Celtic, some Icelandic stuff, variations depending on origins, and, uh—a lot of the stories end pretty badly for the selkie, or the human they choose.”

 

“Bad endings? And they choose what?”

 

There was a sound like Sam running his hand over his face, a muffled sigh. “Lemme start over.”

 

\- -

 

“So a selkie chooses a person that—somebody that—Sam why am I being stalked by a seal-woman.”

 

If Dean’d been counting, this is probably sigh fifteen. Maybe in the twenties. He's not sure.

 

“Dean. You’re freaking lonely.”

 

Dean actually takes the phone away from his ear to blink at it.

 

“You’re kidding me.”

 

“No, Dean, I’m not,” and that’s Sam’s serious-sad voice, one Dean never wants to hear. “You live in the middle of nowhere and there’s nobody around you and—”

 

“Sam—”

 

“—and Dad’s gone and—”

 

_“Sam dammit—”_

 

“—and we’re _on opposite sides of the continent,_ Dean, yes, you’re fucking lonely.”

 

Dean rolls his eyes heavenward. “That doesn’t— _fine,_ Sam, I’m a lonely bastard, boo hoo, what the hell—why would a friggin’— _selkie_ seal lady choose _me?”_ His voice trails off at the end, and he knows he sounds pathetic, so he squeezes the phone, squeezes his eyes shut.

 

“From what I’m reading, selkies respond to that loneliness. They listen for it, and I think they maybe can’t help it. There’s one common thread here, it says, uh,” Sam pauses for a second, and he thinks he’s checking to see if Dean’s still there. Sam clears his throat and goes on. “It says that ‘seven tears of a truly lonely soul shed into the sea call forth the selchie,’ and, um, something I can’t make out about the skin, about taking it off or putting it on—and ‘lovers they shall be.’” Sam clears his throat again, and Dean keeps his eyes closed.

 

“It’s…a rough translation,” Sam hazards.

 

“You. Translated that.”

 

Sam makes a sound. “I tried to. Anyway. So. Yeah.”

 

“So yeah. Well. It’s gone.”

 

“Wait, what?”

 

“I went out with the fish, and the seal’s gone,” Dean says, voice dull. It’s too much to process, because none of it makes sense. Nobody, definitely not a supernatural being that seeks out lonely people worthy of being lovers would choose Dean.

 

Not that selkies are a thing. Not now, anyway. Not outside of lore from centuries past.

 

“What—why the hell didn’t you tell me it was gone?”

 

“You wouldn’t shut up! And it’s stupid, all right, it doesn’t—it’s _not real,_ it wasn’t real and I guess it was just a wounded seal and it’s over now, I’m gonna—I gotta go.”

 

“Dean—”

 

Dean wants to hang up, wants to never talk to Sam about this shit again, but something tugs in his chest, and he makes a pained noise.

 

“I’m sorry I dragged you into this,” he says, and Sam’s saying his name again when he hangs up.

 

He holds the closed phone in his hands and stares out the window, out at nothing.

 

 

 

**SEVEN: Weary Souls…**

 

Dean stands there at his kitchen island, pieces of colored glass in a loose line in front of him. Sam tries to call him back, and Dean lets the phone buzz across the granite, until it knocks against the empty peroxide jug and gets hung up in the crack, stuck. The stone absorbs most of the vibrations then.

 

He touches one of the pieces of glass, spinning it slowly. He thinks idly about refilling the first aid kit, his trash can full of torn open iodine wipes. He thinks about recipes with lemon and shiny silver scales and how there were no new marks in the scrubby dirt and maybe he’s trying not to think at all when there's a knock at his back door.

 

\- -

 

Knock is maybe….not the word.

 

Dean's not sure what the word is for a naked man standing on your back porch, barefoot with dark hair whipping crazily in the air over squinty eyes.

 

He’s tall, almost as tall as Dean, and he’s pale and too lean. There are lines under his eyes, his eyes that are such an arresting, deep blue Dean kind of forgets himself for a moment.

 

The man sways, and Dean instinctively reaches out and catches him by the shoulder and chest. His skin is clammy, and he’s shivering.

 

“Whoa,” Dean says, and he’s got nothing else. Fingers clutch at his arm, too hard, and then they weaken.

 

The man tries to say something, but his throat makes a dry croak instead, and Dean makes himself move. “C’mon,” he says, and he urges him inside, one step at a time. Something on the guy’s torso catches and sticks on Dean’s Henley, and Dean looks down to make sure he doesn’t step on the guy’s feet when he sees sticky gel and blood and big red welts.

 

Dean snaps his head up and pulls the guy in more, fumbles to get the door shut and lean him against it. He stands under his own power, and he tries to speak again and Dean shushes him, almost frantically. “Just—stay right there,” he says, and he backs away, blinks, and has to make himself go for a glass, for water, and he should get a blanket, something warm for him to drink, he should call—somebody. He gets the glass and opens the tap, spring water from the tank and it’s probably gonna taste a little of plastic but he brings it to the man and guides one of his shaky hands to it.

 

The guy grips the glass, and goes a little cross-eyed looking at it, frowning. His nostrils flare, and something pings in Dean’s mind, something he thinks he already knows, and the man _scents_ the water in the cup and then he’s spilling it down his chin trying to drink it all at once.

 

“Dude, easy, slow down, take it slow,” Dean says, and the man’s eyes snap to his as he drinks. Dean realizes how close he’s standing, helping to hold the glass, and the only thing that breaks the moment between them is the choking sound when the man swallows some air.

 

Dean shushes him nonsensically, and takes the lowered glass and refills it as the man coughs. “Here,” he says, and instead of catching on his eyes again he watches his lips part and touch the rim, watches the pads of his fingers as they depress and go white from the inside. He can feel the eyes on his, almost like a touch to his lashes.

 

“Okay,” he says, taking the glass, and he puts it on the counter nearest the sink. The empty egg carton and ammo box are there, next to the fridge.

 

The man stands a little unsteady, breathing heavily from drinking so much water at once.

 

Dean looks down at his torso, at the biggest welt. He swallows when he sees the remains of the gel, the fibers of the gauze. “I think you need to sit down,” he says, and he shifts a little, looks past the kitchen to the living room and its old pair of couches. The big white faux-leather loveseat Dean duct-taped at the bottom corners, that’s still so soft and comfortable he’s been known to nap in it unintentionally. Dean gestures towards it, and the man reaches out as he takes a step and Dean moves to support him. A hand falls on his shoulder and grips there, a strange warmth through the layers of his shirts.

 

Dean walks him through to the living room, watches how his feet move. There’s a fleeting thought that maybe he hasn’t been upright like this for—for a time.

 

He thinks of backwards-facing bones, not meant to face forward. Of knees and joints and an entirely different physiology.

 

He stops thinking about it, because it’s too much. He can get the guy to the couch, though, get him warm and clothed. That, he can do.

 

The man sits heavily with a _hoof_ noise, one that makes Dean blink hard. “Hang on,” he says, and he finds himself backing towards the kitchen, one of the man’s hands gently feeling along the couch, the texture of the covering. He cranes his head and it looks really strange until Dean realizes he’s finding the limits of his spine and neck, and he swears the man is frustrated with his limited field of view.

 

Dean’s back hits the kitchen island and he fumbles behind him for his phone. He has to turn around because he slides the cookbook almost off the edge, and he looks at the beach glass and then remembers pants, he was getting pants.

 

“Be right back,” Dean croaks, and the man’s eyes are on his again, so intense and yet so _trusting_ it’s unreal.

 

Dean runs up the stairs.

 

\- -

 

He’s wearing his heavy sweats and they’re still sandy, and he’s probably tracked a shitton of sand in here, but he has at least two more pairs, he knows he does. He rifles through his closet and fumbles with the phone and when he drops a shirt and its hangar he makes himself pause, breathe. He opens his phone.

 

_SAM ITS A SELKIE_

Dean pulls the shirt back up and re-hangs it and comes up with another Henley, some more socks that’ll be nice and warm and he thinks he hears a noise downstairs. He yanks the nearest pair of sweats out of the little built-in shelf and bundles it all under one arm.

 

His phone buzzes when he’s halfway down the stairs and stalled, because the man is leaning against the kitchen island, bare ass towards Dean, and he’s touching the beach glass.

 

Dean doesn’t know why, but his eyes rove over the man’s body. It’s not a sexy thing, not at all, it’s just—it’s almost like he’s seeing a naked guy for the first time, but in an entirely different light. His ankles look strange. There’s nothing wrong with them, nothing at all, it’s just. They face forward. Like Dean’s. Dean’s stuck on the _foreignness_ of the being in front of him because he _knows,_ and he’s barely seen it—seen _him_ up close in his other—as—it’s just so different, like this.

 

Dean does think he’s underweight, but he’s built from a lot of lean muscle. Dean doesn’t know what he expected, if the human version was going to be like the seal, round and furred or something, not—lean, and trim, and standing naked in his kitchen.

 

Dean clears his throat, and the man, the selkie doesn’t stop gently examining the glass. “I have pants for you,” Dean says, and at this the selkie turns, one hand steadying it on the counter. Dean’s eyes fall quickly, just once, and the tone of the skin at his groin makes him wonder if the selkie’s usually this pale. Something tells him it’s the wounds, the swim, the weariness, and all at once Dean feels the weight of the last several days bear down on his shoulders.

 

He doesn’t doubt the big mean seal is still out there, and he has no idea how someone like him has what this creature needs to heal, to survive in the face of its health and what may be waiting for it at sea.

 

He’s not _enough_ for this.

 

His phone buzzes again, but it starts trilling and doesn’t stop. The selkie startles, and frowns at the phone when Dean raises it up, trying to hold out a hand from under the clothes as a sign of peace. He flips open the phone and snaps it shut, and the selkie still eyes it warily, but allows Dean to approach.

 

“Put these on,” Dean says, and then he wonders if this— _man_ has ever worn a stitch of clothing in his life. He reaches out, and the selkie mirrors him. His fingers close over the bundle, and Dean has to rescue a sock, but the selkie takes it, and uses both hands to pull it all to his chest. He pulls the sock free, and brings it up to his face, tilting his head and letting it turn this way and that.

 

Something in Dean’s chest loosens, maybe breaks a little. “C’mere,” he says, and the selkie’s unwavering attention is on him again. “Uh, this way,” he says, and goes to the living room.

 

He gestures to the couch and sits on the other one, an unremarkable hand-me-down from when he first moved here. “Like this,” he says, and he pulls off one of his socks. “See?” he says, feeling awfully silly, but the selkie has seated himself on the leather sofa and its knees are together, hands resting on the bundle of clothes and it’s watching him very seriously.

 

Dean pulls the sock back on, and then tugs at the fabric of his sweats. He accidentally snaps himself with the long underwear underneath, and covers it by gesturing at the selkie. “Now you,” he says, and the selkie looks down at the clothes in its lap.

 

It moves one sock to the side, and pulls until the arm of the shirt comes free. It— _he_ tugs the rest of the Henley loose and sets it to another side, and then he starts pulling—a blanket, a brown blanket from the pile that wasn’t there, and keeps pulling more blanket out.

 

Dean doesn’t have any fuzzy brown blankets—

 

Dean sits back on the couch, and watches the selkie calmly pull an alarming quantity of…not-blanket from the pile of clothes to drape over the sofa. It—he lays it there, and pats at a couple spots as if to smooth it down, and spends a significant moment regarding it over the white faux-leather. Then he turns to Dean again, and the weight of his gaze stifles Dean’s ability to speak.

 

The selkie looks down, and finds the sweats. It examines the hole at the bottom of one of the legs, and follows it up until he finds the waist. He looks over at Dean, and then at his own legs. He stretches one out, and for a moment he touches the hairs on one shin, seeming bemused. The selkie sticks its foot out and overbalances, but before Dean can get up the selkie’s fallen back into the sofa and is pulling one leg of the sweats on, foot high in the air.

 

Dean’s phone goes off again, and he numbly flips it open while watches the selkie try to figure out how to get the sweats over his ass while he’s sitting down. “Yeah.”

 

“Dean are you freaking serious?”

 

“Sam?”

 

 _“Who else would it be Dean_ are you okay?”

 

“M’fine,” he says, and the selkie’s figured it out, and how to negotiate what appear to be unexpected loose…bits on the front end under the waistband. It falls back again with feet in the air and starts tugging socks over its toes, and a snort escapes Dean’s lips.

 

“Dean? Dean what’s going on?”

 

The selkie gets a sock on, somehow utterly backwards with the heel bunched up over the top of his foot, and he looks up at Dean and smiles.

 

The breath leaves Dean’s body.

 

The selkie’s nose scrunches up and his teeth are bright and his eyes have smile lines for miles as he wiggles his toes. Dean just stares when it goes for the other sock.

 

“Dean!”

 

Dean blinks. “Yeah, Sam, I’m here,” he murmurs, and the selkie glances up at him and grins again when it gets the other sock on, but this one is on the right way and it frowns at it and starts pulling at the extra heel fabric of the other one.

 

“Dean, what the hell.”

 

“He’s—he’s in my living room, Sam,” Dean says, kind of mumbling, and he feels oddly sleepy. Like—all his energy’s just kind of fled, and it takes Sam’s voice bringing him back from being mesmerized anew at the selkie figuring out his sock and then playing with the shirt, squinting at the buttons and then at the ones at Dean’s throat.

 

“The selkie’s a he and he’s in your house?”

 

“He’s gorgeous, Sam,” Dean hears himself say, and Sam makes some kind of choking noise.

 

 _“Dean,”_ Sam says, suddenly sounding very close to the mouthpiece and very serious. “I need you to listen to me.”

 

Dean blinks again, and tears his eyes away from the reddened welts along the selkie’s torso. “I’m here, I’m listening.”

 

“Dean, there are overlaps in the lore with selkies, mermaids and sirens,” Sam says calmly but quickly, and Dean _knew_ it, he totally knew it, “do you feel like you’re in control of yourself right now? I need you to tell me, Dean, I need to hear you say it right now.”

 

Dean stares incredulously at nothing before he finally hones all of his brain onto the conversation. _“Yeah,_ Sam, I’m fine, really, I am. It’s just—it’s a lot, you know?” He scrubs a hand over his face and realizes he hasn’t shaved in—hell, at least a week. “I promise I’m here.”

 

Sam’s quiet for a second. “You just called him gorgeous,” he says.

 

Dean feels his face burning. He said that out loud.

 

“I mean, that’s—cool?” Sam says hesitantly, “I just—is that…usual, for you?”

 

 _“No,”_ Dean says, because yeah, he surprised himself with that too. “I didn’t expect—” any of this, any of it at all. “It’s a _selkie,_ Sam.”

 

“Holy shit,” he hears Sam murmur, and the selkie foregoes the shirt for now and instead reaches for the remote on the arm of the couch, turning it over in his hands.

 

“Holy _shit,”_ Sam says again, louder, “did it bring its skin? What’s it look like? Does he talk? Dean, Dean, it’s—it’s a _selkie.”_

 

Dean stares at the half-naked man seated on his couch, still examining the remote control with a serious, if squinty expression.

 

The line pops and fuzzes. It takes him a second to realize Sam is saying his name.

 

“Dean? Dean, are you there? Dean?”

 

Dean’s throat clicks when he swallows. “Yeah,” he says, “I’m here, Sammy.” It just slips out.

 

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“There’s a selkie in your living room. Like, a _real_ one. For real!” Sam sounds all of seven, and warmth swells in Dean’s chest.

 

“My name is Castiel.”

 

Dean almost drops the phone.

 

The selkie-- _Castiel_ pops the battery cover on the remote, and AAs spring out and clatter to the floor and roll around. He jumps, then bends to peer narrow-eyed at them before picking up one of the little cylinders and turning it over and around in his fingers. He sniffs it.

 

“Yeah, Sam,” Dean says again. “I. I got that.”

 

 

 

— —

 

 

 

**EIGHT: …Home at Last**

The selkie’s voice is rough and sounds like he swallowed some of that beach glass, and Dean stares long enough that Sam starts calling his name again.

 

“You are called Dean,” the selkie says, and Dean just nods dumbly.

 

The selkie puts his hands in his lap, fingers stilled on the battery, and he regards Dean very seriously. “I followed your pain.”

 

Dean stares some more, and then his phone beeps loudly in his ear as Sam mashes buttons. “Ow! Shit, Sam!”

 

“Dean! What’s going on?”

 

“His—his name’s Cas—Castel. Casti _el.”_

 

“He—he talked to you?”

 

Castiel tilts his head at the phone, and meets Dean’s eyes meaningfully.

 

“Uhm. My, um. My brother, Sam.”

 

Castiel’s head straightens. “Hello, Sam,” he says, a little louder than before, and Dean hears Sam gasp.

 

“Holy—uh, hi…?”

 

“Sam says hi,” Dean repeats helplessly. Castiel looks back down and bends to find the other battery on the floor.

 

_“Dean.”_

“Oh my god Sammy what,” Dean says, the ‘Sammy’ just slipping out again, and thankfully Sam seems to ignore it.

 

“Dean, I’m gonna put some stuff together and send it to you and _you need to read it,_ okay? It’s important.”

 

Something in Sam’s voice stills the budding annoyance Dean was feeling. “Okay, Sammy, okay,” he says, and this time he hears Sam sigh.

 

“Just. Email me back or text me, I don’t care what time it is.”

 

“Okay.”

 

“Be careful.”

 

“M’good,” Dean says, and looking across the living room, a rug and scuffed coffee table away, blue eyes look steadily back. For the first time in a while, Dean thinks he might actually feel it.

 

\- -

 

“I. Uh, are you hungry? I was. I have some, um. Some fish.”

 

Dean managed to convince Castiel to put on the Henley, because it’s cold, and he reasonably pointed out that in this form Castiel wasn’t nearly as insulated. The welts seemed to cause some pain, but not much, not as when he was in his seal form.

 

 _Seal form._ Dean has a selkie in his house.

 

Dean goes to the fridge. “I—do you want me to cook it?” He’s honestly not sure what he’d do if Castiel requested the fish raw, and that decides him. He bends and gets the bag with the fish out, and when he stands Castiel is _right there._

Dean blinks, and his eyes fall to Castiel’s mouth. Castiel’s stay on his eyes.

 

“Uh. Cas.”

 

Castiel blinks, and tilts his head. Dean licks his lips.

 

“Can you, um. Back up, a little?”

 

Castiel’s brow furrows as his eyes narrow, and he looks down at the minimal space between them.

 

“My apologies,” he says, and steps back.

 

Once.

 

Dean clears his throat and makes little shooing motions with his free hand, not meeting Castiel’s eyes.

 

Castiel blinks, and moves further back. “I do enjoy fish on occasion,” he says, in a strange intonation. Dean can’t tell if he’s stating a fact or asking a question.

 

“Well,” Dean says. “I have some stuff, some other stuff, if you don’t want the fish.” He realizes he’s just standing there holding the fish bag, and he turns back to the fridge. He likes the idea of getting some _meat_ into this guy, because he looks like he needs it. “How about this, I’ll, uh, I’ll cook something up and—do you want some more water?” He glances back at the island, where Castiel has planted himself again.

 

“Please,” he says.

 

Dean gets the glass and shows him how to turn on the water. “It’s good water,” he says, “but the tank’s kinda old. Sorry if it tastes kind of, uh, not natural.”

 

Castiel drains this glass too, and Dean says “okay” and goes back to the fridge.

 

“How are your—the scratches? They, uh, they look better?” He’s got his hands in the freezer going for some chicken or pork, he can’t tell with the frost on the bags.

 

“They are,” Castiel says, and Dean can’t quite get over his voice. It’s so _low_ and rough, yet weirdly soft sometimes. “Thank you, Dean, for cleaning my wounds.”

 

Dean pulls out his chicken-or-pork and looks over his shoulder. “No problem, Cas,” he says, and he means it.

 

Castiel tilts his head to the side, and Dean’s mind flashes back to the seal. _This_ seal, this man, as the seal, and the dark, round eyes.

 

“Are you gonna be okay?”

 

Castiel regards him steadily, and Dean feels a little uncomfortable under it. “I will heal, given time,” Castiel says, and he peers at what Dean’s unwrapping. “Eating will help.”

 

“Well, got you covered on that front,” Dean says, going for levity, and when Castiel doesn’t laugh he clears his throat and unwraps the meat.

 

It’s chicken, so he puts the oven on to preheat and turns on the hot water. He should get a microwave.

 

He does have a couple potatoes, and he thinks he’s got cans of some vegetable or other somewhere, maybe green beans, and that’s a round enough meal.

 

“Um. Cas.”

 

Castiel looks at him.

 

“Wanna help?”

 

\- -

 

Dean shows Castiel—Cas—how to wash the potatoes, how he’s thawing out the chicken and why he’s preheating the oven. He has Cas pour olive oil into a baking sheet as he cuts up one potato into cubes, and then lets Cas have a shot. Cas wields the knife with dexterity that surprises Dean a little. He’s tempted to ask how often Cas has been in human form, if he’s just getting used to it again after a long while rather than for the first time. Something about the way Cas moves and holds himself tells him it’s the former.

 

Cas cuts up the second potato pretty neatly, and Dean has him put it all on the baking sheet. He dusts the potatoes with salt and pepper and some savory herb mix in a little plastic shaker, and slides it into the oven’s bottom rack.

 

He accidentally cooks the very tips of the chicken breasts with the hot water, and the thickest parts still feel stiff, but they’re not entirely frozen and it’s good enough. Dean tells Cas where the pan is for the oven and tells Cas to put more oil in it, and he shows him how to put pepper and herbs in the oil and dredges the chicken in before laying them down.

 

“Pop that in the oven on the rack above the ’tatos.” Dean has to hand it to him—Cas catches on pretty quick.

 

The evening finds them back in the living room, a kettle warming on the stove because Dean wants to show Cas tea and ask him a thousand questions and he’s afraid to start. He decides to avoid the whole followed-your-pain schtick for the moment and goes with the leopard seal-shaped question, namely if they can expect to see the big bastard again.

 

“It is entirely possible,” Cas says factually, reassuring Dean not at all. “I had not known that Raphael pursued me this far, or that his anger ran so deep as to cause his recent actions.”

 

“What the hell is his problem?” Dean’s maybe a little heated over this, and he hopes Cas gets that.

 

“He does not believe that selkie-kind have any business interacting with humanity,” Cas says, and Dean can’t tell what emotions he’s expressing at the moment, if any. “He harkens back to the days of old, when selkie-kind were aloof, and involved in other affairs above what he feels are those of humanity’s sphere.”

 

Dean nods slowly. “Totally.”

 

“Selkie-kind and humanity have had unfortunate relations, of late, and they’ve dropped off dramatically in more recent decades.”

“Does—does it matter what kind of, um, what kind of seal you are? Are there like, seals that aren’t—I mean, if a species is extinct, does that mean that kind of selkie is gone too?”

 

“Raphael has chosen a female vessel for this incarnation,” Cas says, voice still factual and dry as anything. “He has always been one for displays of overt status.” Cas looks over at when Dean doesn’t respond, and he must read the blank look on his face. “Females of his current species are often considerably larger than the males,” Cas says, like this tidbit carries no more or less weight than Raphael ‘choosing a vessel’ for this ‘incarnation.’ “With Raphael’s abilities, such a vessel would be more powerful indeed.”

 

“Yeah, his ability to be an epic douche is one of them.”

 

Castiel frowns. “I’m not familiar with the second term, but epic is nearly fitting. His power is beyond what many selkies will ever command, living or dead. He harkens to an age before selkies and humanity joined, and he is partially responsible for the rift that exists now.”

 

“I’m saying he’s an asshole, Cas.” There’s a lot to address there, but Dean has a funny feeling. “Uh, how long are we talking? Since this ‘rift?’”

 

“Around two hundred years,” Cas says. “What is an ‘asshole?’”

 

Dean opens his mouth, and shuts it. “It’s. Uh. Two hundred _years?”_

 

“Approximately. Is asshole a contemporary colloquialism?”

 

“It’s—it means he’s a jerk, he’s _mean,_ he’s a bag of—” Dean breaks off, frustrated that he can’t find a way to explain ‘asshole’ without using other ‘contemporary colloquialisms.’ “You know your ass, uh, your butt, it’s the. The—ho—the orifice. There.” Dean knows his face is turning bright red.

 

Castiel tilts his head further, eyes narrowing down as he thinks, and then he brightens. “Oh! You are saying he is like an anus, from which waste issues forth. Which is a mundane and necessary function, but that he is also cruel and mean-spirited, and thus it is derogatory.” He grins. “I like that.”

 

Dean thinks there may be a faintly strange, yet fond smile on his face. At least he thinks that’s what his face is doing. He can’t quite tell.

 

“Well,” Dean says, finding one of his feet sort of kicking forward on its own and meeting the leg of the low coffee table, “your, uh, your vessel is much. Um.” He tries to pull his foot back, and ends up kind of toeing the heel of his other shoe. “It’s way cuter.”

 

Less scary. Smaller. Not as intimidating. Those are things Dean meant to say. Could have said.

 

Cas tilts his head, and immediately Dean remembers his seal-face with its ridiculously expressive eyes and mooshy nose.

 

So maybe Cas’ seal-form is honestly kind of adorable, for a six-hundred-pound animal. He didn’t mean to intimate that _aloud._

 

The kettle begins to whistle, and Dean can’t help but chuckle when Cas startles and then squints at it, watching Dean pour the hot water into mugs with teabags and sugar.

 

He hopes Cas likes sugar.

 

“I have inhabited my vessel nearly as long as I can remember,” he says, contemplative, a little quiet, as he accepts the mug and Dean’s warning about it being hot. “There was a time when I too held a vessel like Raphael’s, and I tasted its power.” Cas glances up at Dean, and then down at his mug. “That was a long time ago.”

 

Dean settles back on the old couch, and feels the weight fall back onto his shoulders, more an awareness that it never left.

 

He looks off to the side. “How old are you, Cas?”

 

Cas’ thumbs play at the rim of the mug, watching the steam. “I don’t remember.”

 

“What did you mean by incarnation?”

 

Cas doesn’t look up. “Selkie souls are infinite, at least as far as I know. When our physical forms pass, be it in this form or our natural form, we are born into a new vessel. Sometimes, a powerful enough selkie retains its memories and can choose its next vessel upon death, usually when that death is caused by age or something other of the selkie’s choosing.”

 

“And what happens if a selkie chooses a human, Cas?”

 

Cas plays with his mug.

 

“Cas.”

 

“A selkie may hear a call, one of pain and loneliness, and as in times of old, they may choose to follow that call.” Cas pauses. “Or. So I am told. It. It does not _feel_ like a choice.” The last is said very quietly, and Cas looks up at Dean then. His eyes are big and dark and Dean has to get up to turn on a few lamps because the sun is setting and the food’s gonna be ready.

 

Cas doesn’t continue, and Dean leaves it while he checks the oven. He has to pee, and he suddenly realizes Cas may need to do that too, so he shows him the bathroom and how to flush and what toilet paper is for. (“Ah, for the anus.” “….yeah, Cas. For that.” “Humans are very clever.”)

 

The timer goes off, and Dean checks the chicken while Cas presumably remembers the more ‘mundane functions’ while in human form. He does make sure Cas washes his hands when he comes back out.

 

He’s setting plates when he realizes he forgot to check for green beans or whatever, but there’s enough meat and potatoes for them both, crisp and browned with the oil, and it’s not like Cas has any extra on him. He serves the food, and warns Cas again about the temperature.

 

“I’d forgotten, the convenience of eating with one’s hands,” Cas says with a happy sigh, as he dances a piece of potato from one hand to the other and blows on it.

 

“Cas,” Dean says.

 

Cas accidentally fumbles the potato, and it lands to the side of his plate with a little _pat_. He looks up with wide eyes.

 

Dean uses his fork to gesture to the utensils on either side of Cas’ plate.

 

Cas looks at them, and then he picks up a fork in a fisted grip. He turns it this way and that, examining the tines. “Oh!” he says. He switches his fingers around a couple of times, but he gets his wayward potato speared and into his mouth.

 

Cas’ first bite of potato has his eyes widening, and then Dean has to tell him about slowing down and breathing and maybe a little bit about manners, though in truth he’s pretty flattered for such a simple meal.

 

Then again, maybe the guy hasn’t eaten roasted potatoes in a thousand years or something, and Dean’s aren’t all that special.

 

Cas declares the chicken ‘adequate,’ which stings a little at first, until Dean realizes that it tastes just fine and Cas meant the protein or whatever, that the food will help him build his strength back. The meal’s a little stilted, and whenever Dean thinks to open his mouth Cas seems to need more water or another napkin and information on how long he should chew before swallowing, so Dean drops it.

 

He washes the dishes when they’re done, and Cas observes like it’s something he wants to learn, and Dean can’t do this anymore.

 

“Cas, you can’t be here,” he starts, and the plate Cas was drying drops to the counter with a clatter. Cas’ eyes are huge, and Dean wants to stab himself with the fork he’s holding too tightly. “I dunno what you thought you heard or followed but man, you barked up the wrong tree, okay—you came up the wrong beach,” he says at Cas’ confused look. At least it’s better than the wide-eyes. “I have no idea what to do with a—when a selkie has apparently ‘followed my pain’ and decided that we’re gonna be—that we’re— _shit.”_

Dean runs his hands through his hair, his wet, soapy hands, and draws one down his shirt. He looks into the living room, at the silky blanket a very familiar shade of tan-brown on the back of his couch, and a hysterical laugh wants to bubble out of his throat even as it feels thick. “For all I know I’m losing my goddamn mind and I’ve—conjured up this crazy situation entirely because I am a _sad fuck,_ okay—”

 

There’s a single sliding step and a hard hand on his shoulder and Castiel spins him, very in his space, the breath of his sharp words warm puffs against Dean’s cheek.

 

“I swam from a very southern expanse of pack ice on what you call Antarctica,” Cas said, “and I made my way northwards until I hit a coastline that I followed for leagues only to realize I still had an entire _continental mass_ between myself and your call. I was lucky enough to find a narrow strip of land to cross and had to learn how to navigate an artificial waterway nearly _eighty kilometers long_ from friendly local dolphins in order to get into the _correct ocean,_ Dean, where the water was considerably warmer than I am accustomed to.

 

“If my journey was a construct your _active_ imagination,” Castiel says, bone dry, “it was very taxing.” He retrieves his mug and sips from it.

 

Dean stares, and his eyes go from Cas’ serious, dark eyes to the lines on his lips to the slope of his cheekbones. This—this creature has no idea who it chose to follow.

 

“I—Cas—Castiel.” Dean closes his mouth and opens it again. “I _don’t want this._ I’m not—why the hell would you come all this way for—I am _not worth it,_ man.” Dean leaves the sink and dishes and goes up the stairs. He feels Cas follow him too closely, so he spins when he reaches is bedroom and makes Cas pull to an abrupt stop in the hall.

 

Cas blinks and gets his footing again. He looks _sad._ “I followed your call. A selkie doesn’t just—there is a lot of loneliness and pain in the world, Dean, and I have existed for time _beyond what I know how to measure._ I _felt_ your pain, more than I have ever heard or felt another’s before.”

 

 _“Why,_ Cas? You can’t tell me then that this doesn’t have consequences attached. What happens to your immortal soul or whatever if you get called? Why’s that asshole so keen on keeping his power and selkie-kind or whatever avoiding humanity?”

 

Cas is breathing a little faster, and Dean almost feels good for getting a reaction out of him. Well, maybe not _good,_ but satisfied. “The selkie releases its own power and is bound to that human until death, at which point the selkie then roams the afterlife—it’s a different plane of existence than this one, and not the same as when selkies are between vessels.”

 

Dean blinks. “I—where does the human soul go?”

 

Cas blinks too, and then he seems to realize Dean doesn’t understand. “The selkie is bound to the human until the _human_ dies, and the selkie is bound to the afterlife. A soul without a vessel. Some say that the selkie finds the human soul it was bound to and the two are joined in the afterlife for eternity, but—Raphael has often decried that as tales told to children, as falsehood.” Cas looks down at one of his human hands, and he turns it over in the silvery light of the moon, the skin playing over veins and bone. “I used to think he was simply trying to deter selkie-kind from pursuing human calls, and I often argued with him. It was—the beginning of the rift between myself and my own people. Before I left, I spoke to several elders, and as I understand it Raphael wasn’t lying.”

 

Dean’s mouth is open in horror. “Cas, you—Cas, _no._ You _can’t.”_

 

Cas leans forward, eyes bright and intense. “Dean, I left my entire tribe behind—”

 

“You don’t do that,” Dean hisses, surprising himself and unable to stop his words, a finger up and in Cas’ face. “You don’t turn your back on _family._ Not for this, _not_ for me.”

 

“Is that what you feel you’ve done?”

 

Dean blinks, hot anger spearing through him, dragging barbs along its path. It takes him a second to find his voice, and when he speaks he can feel his lips pulling back from his teeth. “Cas dammit you _lose your soul,_ what the hell is worth that? Do I not get a fucking say in this? Do you? You said you didn’t have a choice, Cas, is that true?”

 

Cas doesn’t answer, and Dean nods. “Yeah,” he says. He holds out his arms, and then he drops them, palms slapping at his thighs and Cas jumps. “Humanity. Not all it’s cracked up to be, is it?”

 

Cas’ sad face is more than Dean can handle, his eyes otherworldly and luminous. “I like this tea,” he says quietly to his mug, and Dean shuts his own eyes and then goes down the hall and shuts his door.

 

 

 

**NINE: Tea**

 

It’s something like three in the morning when Dean remembers Sam’s email.

 

He’s been tossing and turning, after listening for aching minutes to hear Cas’ footsteps creak back down the hall and go down the stairs.

 

He didn’t even set up the couch for him, but hell. He’s got an epic fuzzy blanket. One that he apparently can wrap around his shoulders and mosey on out the door and back into the sea, and out of Dean’s life.

 

Dean drags his ass out of bed, gritty and in need of a shower. He should have washed his sheets today, too.

 

Yesterday. Whatever.

 

Dean boots up his laptop, and thinks of his mug downstairs. He wants to go get it, but what he really wants to do is see if Cas is curled up on the couch, or if he’s gone, his blanket—his sealskin along with him.

 

Dean cranks on the dial-up, and waits.

 

He fidgets, and jiggles his knee, and the more he doesn’t think about going down for tea the more he gets thirsty. The modem seems overloud in the quiet, and he thinks he can hear the beginnings of rain on the roof.

 

He opens his email.

 

There are three, one after another, all from Sam. The timestamp on the first is a few minutes after they hung up, and the second one is right about the time he was arguing with Cas in the hallway.

 

The third was sent—minutes ago.

 

Dean frowns, and his cursor hovers, but he makes himself click the first one.

 

It’s…long.

 

Sam clearly put a lot of care into it, because he lays out facts without his opinions, though most of it is shitty as hell.

 

It’s along the lines of what Cas has already said: selkie souls are immortal (Dean thought that that’s what _souls_ were, in general) but there’s more to it. Selkies, their spirits, were cyclical, infinite, in theory, and while a selkie may not remember a previous life, it would generally get to choose the direction of its next one provided it had died on its own terms. Dean guesses that’s something along the lines of picking its vessel or whatever.

 

Sam goes into detail about the theories behind the reincarnations, and why it’s important that the selkie choose its own fate, the terms of its passing, in order to be not only reincarnated but to retain the knowledge and power from the life it leaves before moving on to the next one. There’s a bit about certain selkies having more power than others, of hierarchy within selkie culture, and yeah, that sounds a lot like a certain douche. Dean keeps reading.

 

If a selkie dies suddenly, or if it dies as a selkie shouldn’t—as in, if it lives as a human, with a human—the selkie’s soul does not reenter the plane where intermediary souls reside until they find their next vessel or next life. Instead, these souls are forsaken, and they enter the afterlife (as Cas said, an entirely different plane) in a state such that they cannot escape it, and are doomed to wander it alone and unconnected from either the human soul they followed or those of selkie-kind ever again, until the very power of the soul itself wanes and—

 

Dean sits back, and clenches his teeth. He holds his breath and wills away the sting in his sinuses.

 

The power of the selkie’s soul will eventually run out, and the soul itself will cease to exist.

 

Dean takes a moment outside of the sheer tragic romance of it to smile at Sam’s dedicated research, to find out such deep information from lore and secondary sources what Dean got from the horse’s mouth.

 

Seal’s mouth.

 

Dean’s smile evaporates, his throat thickening again.

 

Dean doesn’t even want to open Sam’s second email, but he does anyway.

 

It’s written _from_ Sam, not just _by_ Sam.

 

It starts with _Dean, I have an idea._

Dean doesn’t want to read it, but he does.

 

And then he reads it again.

 

And one more time.

 

It ends with Sam asking him to please text and tell him he’s at least okay. Outside, the rain starts coming down harder, and Dean starts to get up, to go get his phone, but his eyes won’t leave the third email.

 

He opens it. It’s a single line, no salutation, no signature:

 

_I’ve found someone who can help._

 

 

 

**TEN: Of Witches and Souls**

 

Sam fervently hopes Dean won’t kill him for this.

 

He’d stayed up late, really late, because once he started digging he couldn’t stop.

 

Sam read about the lost souls, the tragic endings to nearly all the tales in selkie lore—be it Icelandic or Celtic or even some English, and others besides that may have predated them all. It often revolved around the selkie—male or female—tempting a married human, or being coerced by a human into leaving their own spouses to live on land. There was often the stealing or hiding of the selkie’s sealskin, removing the selkie’s ability to return to their natural form and home entirely.

 

Some tales weren’t so bad, but the best ending Sam had found so far was that of a selkie woman having children with the man who’d hidden her skin. They’d come to love one another, and she’d even forgiven him in a sense, but she always longed for the sea she couldn’t return to. One day, one of her children had found her skin, and she’d wrapped herself up and returned to the ocean without a second thought. She continued to visit her children and splash with them in the waves, but as far as Sam knows, her soul may yet have been lost. It wasn’t clear on that part.

 

He’d had his notepad from work, the one with the Celtic characters he’d kept running into, tales buried deeper in the lore than he’d encountered before. He got bits and pieces as he dug more into the parts about the souls and the afterlife and reincarnation, and there was something important about the plane where the souls went in the interim, the ones that didn’t get lost.

 

He made some notes to come back to that, because that was key, he knew it was somehow—there were bits that didn’t add up. Of souls that weren’t lost, yet didn’t come back.

 

Sam had glanced at his notepad again and again, and finally his eyes lit on the Celtic characters he’d doodled, added knots and curlicues to, and he’d been trying to place them. Literally—a place, maybe one of the planes, and he realized all along it had been a name.

 

It had been hidden, perhaps by selkie-kind themselves. Sam knew there was more, because there were selkies that _chose_ their humans, and it hadn’t had anything to do with affairs or stealing of skins and when Sam connected these unfinished tales with the souls that never got lost but never came back, he knew he had something.

 

Maybe even some _one._

 

Dean had finally texted him, after he’d fallen asleep at something like five-thirty in the morning. He’d shot out his arm when his phone went off before he was awake. He’d blearily read the text, just a line of _read ur emails_ and Sam had wanted to throw his phone across the room. Instead, he dragged himself upright, made stupidly strong coffee, and called his brother.

 

\- -

 

_“Rowena?”_

“Yes, Dean, for the third time,” Sam says, “she’s a Scottish witch, she knows selkies, like, _knows_ selkies, take that however you will, and she’s offered to help us.”

 

 _“Us,_ Sam?”

 

“Yes _us,_ Dean, because I’m not letting you go through this alone!”

 

“And what have you gotten ‘us’ into, Sammy? She’s a witch!”

 

Sam sighs. He had to know this would be a hard sell, but that assumes Dean’s for _sale._ This is insane.

 

“Talk it over with Cas. See what he thinks.”

 

“I’ve known Cas for a _day,_ Sam, and that’s in his speaking human form! Cas is a _selkie,_ and this is just freakin’ crazy!”

 

“Do you want to save his soul?”

 

Oh, that’s a low blow. “I want him to make his own _choice,_ Sam, and that means taking his damn skin and leaving and going back to where he came from.”

 

“What would your choice be?”

 

Dean blinks.

 

Sam’s voice is even, frustratingly even. Dean doesn’t _know_ Cas, he can’t be expected to just—

 

Just because he’s _lonely_ or whatever doesn’t make this—it doesn’t mean—

 

Dean rubs his face. He should go to bed. Sleep on this. Wake up tomorrow.

 

Cas probably won’t even be there. An empty fake-leather loveseat and no fuzzy blanket over it, an old mug of cold tea and dishes in the sink.

 

A line of colored glass on a cracked kitchen island.

 

A softly tinkling chime hung over an old, beat-up porch.

 

A powerful creature that risked its life to save his, in the face of an even more powerful one that fully intended to kill them both.

Dean doesn’t _deserve_ someone like Cas.

 

Cas left his tribe. His family. He’s been on the run, not only following Dean’s—his call, but running from a life he no longer believes in, towards one he does.

 

With him, of all people.

 

“I don’t even remember crying seven tears into the fucking ocean,” he mutters, and he hears Sam start typing.

 

“I didn’t say I was agreeing!” he shouts.

 

“Uh huh,” Sam says, “I just sent her an email.”

 

“We _email_ witches now?”

 

\- -

 

When Dean gets up for real, it’s raining outside. There’s gray light, so the sun’s up, hidden somewhere above the clouds.

 

Thunder rolls gently, and it makes Dean shiver in a way that actually scares him a little.

 

He goes downstairs, still feeling like he needs a shower. He looks at his feet on the floor, and wanders to the kitchen island, not looking left at the living room. He touches one of the pieces of beach glass, and makes himself look.

 

The white loveseat is empty. There’s a pair of sweats and a Henley on it, and Dean can see a sock on the floor.

 

There’s no fuzzy blanket.

 

His shoulders droop, and he breathes out what feels like a lifetime of air.

 

He swallows as a lump grows in his throat and makes it hard to breathe, and tells himself it’s for the better.

 

Dean goes to the sink and finds two mugs. He takes the old teabags out, one kind of stuck to the bottom sugar residue. He starts to rinse it when he hears something…weird.

 

“Blegh.”

 

Dean blinks.

 

The mug in his hand definitely did not make that noise.

 

He puts it down and turns the water off, looking at it.

 

Predictably, it sits there.

 

“Mfibph?”

 

Dean moves away from the sink, and takes the couple steps to the back door. He tugs it open and pushes at the storm door, steps in sockfeet out onto a relatively steady board.

 

The windchime sings above his head, and a six-hundred-pound tan-brown seal lays in the sand in front of his back porch.

 

“Geaahh.”

 

Dean stares, and it stares back.

 

It looks…better. Bigger, even. Or at least—rounder. It’s pointed mostly at the sea, a little left-side on, so Dean can’t see the wounds well enough from here. It’s definitely far more mobile and…jiggly than before. Dean wants to say something, to ask if this is—if this is goodbye, if there’s anything he can do, when the seal tilts its head. It does that weird bendy-backwards move, where its head is upside-down relative to its body, and then it _yells._

It sounds like a person shouting “Aaaaa!” very loudly, and Dean nearly leaps out of his skin. The yell trails off, and the seal puts its head back into a more normal, laws-of-physics-friendly position. “Egg.”

 

Dean's mouth incredulously forms the word ‘egg?’ but no sound comes out.

 

The seal tilts its head the other way, nostrils going round and flexing. It squints.

 

Dean can’t help it. A snort bursts out of him, and then he’s laughing when the seal’s eyes narrow down to slits.

 

It raspberries, and that only makes him laugh harder.

 

\- -

 

Dean stops laughing when the seal pivots around in the sand to face him, and slithers forward a little.

 

It’s still so strange to see, and then Dean doesn’t know exactly _what_ he’s seeing, because the seal wiggles, and shifts, and it’s weird but this is when Dean absolutely _knows_ magic is involved because it’s Cas standing up from gently rolling folds of sandy skin, draped around him like a blanket.

 

 

There’s no more visible flippers or anything strange, and perhaps Cas is sparing him that, though Dean’s not sure Cas would. It’s just Cas, bare underneath the sealskin, walking towards him in a way _probably_ not meant to be seductive, especially not after stepping out of his seal-form.

 

Dean can’t help but stare, and not because Cas is nude. It’s just—the welts on his torso are faded even more, and he bets that they’ve faded to something between what they were and scars on his seal hide. He looks fuller, in the face and neck and his shoulders, just as broad but with more heft to them. And his skin—

 

The clouds are gray and the sun’s hidden, but Cas’ skin is so much less pale. He wonders if it would hold a tan, what its natural shade is, if he’ll get to see it in the sun.

 

“You, uh,” Dean starts, and has to clear his throat pretty hard. “You look a lot better,” he says gruffly.

 

“Thank you,” Cas says. “For the food. And…for the tea.” Cas looks up at him, eyes wide and blue. “For the choice.”

 

Dean blinks, something in his chest tightening, or maybe loosening. Unmooring. “You—”

 

A new peal of thunder begins, somewhere out over the seal, and tumbles towards them until it breaks over the beach, the house. Dean’s breath feels hard to catch. “You felt that?”

 

“Lonely souls,” Cas says, voice quieter than Dean’s ever heard it, “they call to one another.”

 

A moment passes, and Dean watches his own fingers come up under Cas’ chin, gently urging it upwards.

 

Cas looks at him from under his lashes, and Dean’s breath stills in his chest.

 

He looks up at Cas earnestly. He opens his mouth.

 

“‘Egg?’”

 

Cas sniffs and reaches up to push Dean’s hand away, taking a half-step back. “My natural form is not the best for direct communication with your kind,” he says stiffly.

 

Dean bites his lips, and Cas’ answering squint makes him duck his head.

 

There’s the sound of shuffling sand over the waves and then Cas is in his space, inhaling, and Dean’s skin tingles.

 

“I like being able to smell you,” Cas says, like that isn’t a weird-ass thing to say.

 

“I need a shower. I smell like stinky seal,” Dean says. “Who smells like wet dog.”

 

“I have never smelled a wet dog, and I am not—” Cas dips his nose to the vicinity of his own armpit, and then he crosses his arms in a huff. “I am not _stinky.”_

Dean’s smile comes, and blooms, and fades. It leaves behind something warm, something…hopeful. His eyes rove over Cas, his face, his wild hair, his body. He takes a slow step forward, and Cas looks up from the corner of his eye.

 

“You’re beautiful,” Dean says.

 

Cas blinks.

 

One more step, and he’ll be in Cas’ space. More in it, close enough to kiss.

 

Dean reaches out, and as his hands come to rest on the warm skin of Cas’ arms, feeling the muscle there, a new wave of thunder rumbles over the house. Dean shudders.

 

“Is that you?” His voice feels very small.

 

Cas blinks and looks down, almost demure. “It is not within my control, but…yes. In a sense.”

 

Dean shivers again, not sure he’ll ever know the extent of the being in front of him, willingly under his hands.

 

He takes the step. A shiver takes him in turn.

 

“What’re we doing, Cas,” Dean murmurs, almost touching Cas’ lips.

 

“I don’t know,” Cas says back, his own hands coming up. They’re not quite so tentative, just—careful. Polite, almost, in the way they’re exploring. “But I know you feel it.” One of his hands tightens, firms against Dean’s lower back, and Dean’s heart beats faster in his chest.

A soft rain begins to fall.

 

\- -

“Are you certain?”

 

“I’m sure it’s your best shot, Cas.” Sam’s voice is tinny over the speakerphone, and he sounds wired but serious. “I sent Dean everything I had, if you want to look over it.”

 

“I’m familiar with the rumor surrounding this witch,” Cas says, resting his elbows on the cracked granite island. Dean looks sharply at him. “But I’ve never dealt with her directly. I believe Raphael is familiar with her as well, and will likely be in opposition to any contact with her. I don’t know that this is a wise course of action.”

 

“Do you have another one?” Sam asks bluntly, and Cas looks up at Dean.

 

Dean shrugs, playing with a piece of beach glass. Cas’ hand reaches out, and fingers cover his own.

 

Dean looks at their hands, and then up at Cas’ steady gaze. His…hopeful gaze.

 

Dean takes a bracing breath. “How do we do this, Sam?”

 

\- -

 

They go to the old barn.

 

They take Sam’s rental, because Dean’s truck can’t fit four. (Well, maybe Cas could ride in the bed, but he’d tip the truck over. Dean’s arm is totally gonna bruise from when he maybe mentioned that to Cas.)

 

(To be fair, Cas had been contrite, unaware of his power, but he’d gone straight back to stormy when Dean had said it was so worth it.)

 

Sam’s rental is silver and claims to be something it very much is not, and Dean complains about the legroom the entire way from his house to the barn, partially to avoid talking to Sam, and he’s not entirely sure how he feels about that.

 

Sam drives, because it’s his rental. Dean and Cas are crammed in the back, and Rowena rides shotgun.

 

Rowena. Rowena is…

 

She’s a witch.

 

She’s Scottish, with fiery red hair, an old, strange and beautiful dress, and shoes absolutely not meant for rocky, sandy terrain.

She looks fresh as a daisy for someone who purportedly took a red-eye over the Atlantic, whereas Sam looks every inch the trip from California.

 

Sam is taller than he remembers, with more hair and giant shirts and huge shoes. He’d dealt surprisingly well with the nude guy wrapped in a huge fuzzy blanket and his serious introduction (“Hello, Sam,” and nothing else) and he’d let Dean hug him, tentatively. He’d brought his own big arms up for a couple pats before Rowena had delicately cleared her throat and noted the time.

 

“So how’re we gonna do this?” Dean asks warily, because he may not know near as much about this stuff as Sam does, but he knows you don’t just trust a witch.

 

“All in good time,” Rowena says, in that lilting voice of hers. “This is hardly the setting for a serious discussion.”

 

A storm rumbles outside, and Sam’s careful when he takes the asphalt to the dirt track, watching for places they could get stuck.

 

“A wee bit agitated, are we?” Rowena says as thunder vibrates the cheap plastic of the car.

 

Cas doesn’t say anything, but he hunkers down in his borrowed clothes and leans towards Dean.

 

Dean glances at Sam’s eyes in the mirror, and then reaches over and takes Cas’ hand.

 

They’re silent for the rest of the drive.

 

\- -

 

The barn is only a little less old than the boathouse, and not as gutted. There are still scraps of leather straps on the walls, half-walls of sheep stables and metal implements Dean doesn’t know the name of. There’s a wide enough space under the old hayloft, and Sam reaches up to yank down an old hanging board and throw it somewhere else it won’t be an obstacle. Dean winces, thinking he’s sure to get a splinter, but apparently he doesn’t.

 

“I still don’t understand how a spell can save Cas’ soul,” Dean says, eyeing the setup Rowena’s laying out. All things she’d brought in the trunk of Sam’s rental, in an old suitcase that looks like it’s from another time. It probably is, Dean thinks.

 

She drapes a thick piece of fabric with a strange symbol and glyphs or something over an old wooden spool like a tablecloth. She places a silver candelabra at one offset, and lays out what look like a string of dried herbs—sage?—and a bottle of something. There’s a small vial that looks like pink sea salt, a gemstone, and then a wooden bowl in the middle.

 

And then, of course, a knife, a single piece of forged iron with a curling handle that turns over itself in what appear to be impossible Celtic knots.

 

“It’s _simple,_ boy,” the witch says, the knife _thunking_ to the table. There’s a strange gleam in her eyes. “Your selkie can stay with you, forever and ever.” Her accent rolls over the words like they’re at once nothing and everything.

 

Dean’s words are dry and cracked, his chest hollow. “But _how?”_

 

Rowena smiles, and as it reaches her eyes, it’s somehow all the more disturbing for it.

 

“He dies.”

 

\- -

 

“Oh do calm down.” Rowena’s rolled her eyes enough that she thinks they may actually fall from her head, like her mum’s always said they would. She adjusts her Focus, putting the gem just so. “I swear, I thought my boy was dramatic. Your selkie can stay with you for the rest of your mortal life by staying for the rest of his own.”

 

She looks between them, and they may be tall and they may be handsome but by Jove, they’re dense.

 

“It’s simply limits him to a single life—this one, with you. He’ll die when you die, and he won’t come back.” Rowena enunciates her words, and she owes it to a long lifespan—humanly speaking—that she can maintain her composure in the face of such dull wit.

 

“His soul won’t be lost forever,” she says. “As long as it joins with yours, he can still wear his skin without risking his, and he can frolic in the waves as a seal or roll in the hay with you as a man, and when ye both die ye can roam the afterlife to yer heart’s content, forever one, together forever.” She smiles as she says it, sing-songing with little hand motions to drive the sappy point home.

 

She opens her eyes to three staring faces.

 

“Oh for the bloody love of tea ya lackwits, _you can get married.”_

Dean’s mouth opens a few times, and the selkie tilts his head to the side like a wee bird.

 

She sighs. “Samuel, please tell me ye understood that.”

 

“They…join their souls together now, so that when they pass, they’ll be together in the afterlife, and—Dean’s soul won’t go astray, Cas’ soul will stay with his and not get reincarnated or, uh, be doomed to wander alone forever.”

 

She claps her hands and both Dean and the selkie jump. “I knew I liked at least one of you bloody lumberjacks!”

 

Dean has the nerve to look offended, but it passes and she braces for the inevitable question. “Wait a second. All the stories of lost selkie souls, the ones with the human _affairs_ —it’s because they died out of _wedlock?”_

Rowena gives him an angelic smile. “Tragic, innit?”

 

\- -

 

There’s much angsting and hand-wringing and shuttered discussions between selkie and human, brother and brother, and even brother and selkie. Rowena calmly examines her nails, and notes the polish on one is chipped. She frowns; the pigment is hard to come by. One doesn’t just dilute nightshade and mix it with faerie tears every day.

 

“What’s the catch?”

 

Yep, that Samuel. Definitely the smarter one.

 

 

 

**ELEVEN: Fairytale**

 

“So you’ve been secretly performing selkie weddings for—centuries—and Raphael and his cronies are after you.” Samuel sounds more than a little skeptical, and she knows it’s because he’s wondering exactly how the three of them can do what she wants.

 

“Well when one does piss off the old gods, one does generally incur a comeuppance,” she says, and decides to let them figure out who she means, and who pissed off whom.

 

“Yeah, not touching that,” Dean mutters, and Rowena looks up at him, really allows herself to _see_ him. He feels it, even if he doesn’t know exactly what she’s doing, because mortals can tell when you do that. She comes up to him, and touches her fingertips to his chest, just under the vulnerable parts of his neck.

 

“I will tell you this, Dean-o,” Rowena says, the nickname coming oddly quieter and more affectionate than she intended. “Whatever you’re thinking in that pretty if vacuous head of yers, you are _not worthless.”_ Her voice goes serious and even a little hard, and at least she’s arrested his attention. “That selkie over there, that supernatural bein’, he _chose_ ye. Up-up-up,” she says, tapping her fingers to forestall a doubtlessly foolish comment about selkies and choice, “his _soul_ answered yer own.”

 

She takes a step back. “I know a thing or two, lad. If he answered your call, ‘tis because yours was the brightest. It takes a brilliant soul for a selkie to follow all the way from the other side of the world.”

 

She makes sure he’s looking her in the eye before she delivers her last. “Do not dishonor that.”

 

Samuel clears his throat, and Rowena takes her hand off of Dean. He blinks, and steps back, towards the selkie.

 

“So. We get Raphael off your back, and you’ll marry Dean and Cas.”

 

Dean sputters a little at this, and Rowena turns to address them all. “Oh no,” she says. “I’ll marry the boyos now. I expect repayment at a later date, in kind.”

 

Samuel’s eyes narrow, but Dean just looks disturbed. “You…want us to marry…so you…to…?”

 

Rowena sighs.

 

“I’ll be joinin’ yer souls, and all I ask in return is a boon, something along an equivalent…scale.”

 

“And you’re not gonna tell us what that is right now.” Samuel’s voice is flat, because he’s already figured that out.

 

Rowena smiles. “Trust me,” she says, “this is worth yer while, if you care about yer brother and his boyfriend.”

 

Samuel blows out a heavy breath, and turns to his brother and the selkie.

 

“It’s your call, guys.”

 

Dean looks at the selkie, and the selkie, Castiel, he looks at Dean.

 

Rowena’s a patient one. She waits.

 

\- -

 

“Of _course_ there’s blood.”

 

“It’s soul magick, Winchester, of course there’s blood, now stop bein’ squeamish.”

 

Dean’s understandably nervous, and he’s _sorry_ if he’s not a centuries-old _witch_ who marries friggin’ _selkies_ on the regular and is used to this shit.

 

Maybe he’s a little nervous, too.

 

It’s one thing to save Cas’ soul. That he’s got no problem with.

 

It’s another entirely to _join_ Cas’ soul to his, to bind him to a single mortal life. With _him,_ of all people.

 

As if Rowena can sense his line of thought, she pins him with her eyes without stopping what she’s doing with the herbs and crystals or whatever. Dean clenches his jaw once, and tries to clear his mind.

 

He opens his eyes when Rowena snaps her fingers right in front of his face. “Welcome back,” she says, and Cas is looking at him, concerned.

 

“Dean,” he starts, and Dean’s already shaking his head.

 

“I wanna do this, Cas.”

 

“Dean—”

 

Dean reaches for Cas’ arm and slides down, finds his hand. He holds Cas’ eyes.

 

“I’m in this, if you are.”

 

Cas looks at him, really _looks_ in that way he has, and Dean lets him. Cas’ eyes are so—everything. They’re bright and dark, this blue and then this other blue, so human and so very not.

 

Dean can’t quite grasp the full measure of compassion in them, if that’s even the right word. If a word could hope to contain the multitude of things in Cas’ eyes, if what Dean’s seeing is a shade of his soul.

 

Cas opens his mouth.

 

“Do they do this a lot?”

 

Rowena’s voice makes Dean blink back to himself, and Cas turns to make this cute disgruntled face that, at that very moment, reminds Dean of his seal-form something fierce, and he snorts.

 

Now Cas is looking at _him,_ and Dean ducks his head, sucking in both lips. He clears his throat and shakes himself quickly, and Cas drops his hand in surprise. “Okay,” he says, cracking his neck. “C’mon. Souls. Let’s do this.”

 

Cas blinks, and shifts around, and Dean realizes _he’s_ nervous too. He’s scared, and he’s brave, and he’s standing here with Dean in spite of it.

 

He swam a billion miles, or leagues or whatever, chanced all kinds of danger and showed up half-starved, fought off a leopard-douche twice his size, and did it all for Dean.

 

Dean looks at Cas, this _supernatural bein’_ standing across from him now, and he again reaches for his hand.

 

“Egg,” he says, very seriously, and Cas squints, right before his face blossoms into a ridiculous, nose-scrunching grin and Dean’s heart swells.

 

Dean can see Sam out of the corner of his eye, looking between them like they’re crazy, and maybe they are.

 

 _“That’s_ certainly a new part to the ritual,” Rowena mutters, and she does something with her hands over the bowl that makes the gemstone start to glow. Dean edges away a little, and Cas firms his grip.

 

“Hands, please,” Rowena says, and Dean lets out a shaky breath. He looks over at Rowena’s eyes, and then he extends his hand to her.

 

She takes it and turns it palm-up, and Dean preemptively winces when she firms her grip and draws the knife smoothly and quickly across the skin, along one of the lines there with effortless precision. Dean blows air out slowly, her strength surprising him. Between her hand and Cas’ it keeps him steady.

 

Rowena turns his hand so the blood drains off one side, and she says something that sounds vaguely Gaelic and Dean stares as light shines from his palm, the blood in the bowl.

 

She lets go of his hand but directs him to keep it near, though oddly blood has stopped flowing. The glow remains, something Dean can feel in a way he doesn’t know how to measure. It’s not a color or a smell or a temperature, but all of those things and more, beyond.

 

When Dean looks into Cas’ eyes, he’s immediately certain that this is the sound-voice-light-pull that Cas followed.

 

Cas holds his own hand to Rowena without being asked. He keeps his eyes on Dean and doesn’t even flinch, though Dean’s palm throbs in sympathy.

 

The glow from Cas’ hand and blood is different, unfamiliar, foreign. It…resonates on a stranger plane, or frequency—Dean doesn’t have the words. The bowl glows brighter, and quietly thrums.

 

Rowena takes their palms and gently urges them together, and Dean can feel the very real slick and warmth of blood between them.

 

The bowl starts to sing, two very clear disparate notes that are just _not quite._ Not quite right, not quite in tune, different colors and smells and textures. The glow from inside comes up to join with the light seeping between the seam of their hands, and the music, the tone changes. Dean can’t help but tear his eyes from Cas’ to look at it, and in the next moment, he can _feel_ Cas’ soul in his hand.

 

It’s a color, and a light, and a taste; an infinite span of warmth. It’s everything at once, forever, and it’s not too much. It’s no longer foreign or unknowable. Strange, new, different, yes; but it is _home._

Dean doesn’t realize his eyes are stinging until he’s blinking out tears, the pure, harmonic tone from the bowl in his ears. His breath wants to hitch but he holds it together because when he swings his gaze back to Cas, he sees not just the man, the human form in front of him. He sees without seeing: a span of lifetimes, an ocean of lights, an entire galaxy of stars.

 

It’s the ineffable feeling of _home_ all over again, all-encompassing and yet the very opposite of overwhelming. It just _is,_ a strange state of infinite calm.

 

The bowl’s singing recedes to a hum, quiet perfect in its rightness.

 

“Well,” Rowena says, sounding genuinely surprised. “That’s one for the books.”

 

Dean comes back to his body, his mere physical body on two legs in an old barn that smells of sawdust and sea, his human hand holding Cas’ own. Cas is across from him in a newly-mortal body, suddenly seeming so much smaller, so much more real and immediate, and kind of achingly beautiful.

 

“This is the part where ye kiss, boys,” Rowena says, sounding a little gleeful, a lot smug.

 

Dean doesn’t remember closing his eyes.

 

He doesn’t remember leaning in, or letting go of Cas’ hands, either of them, but:

 

Stubble, under his dry palm. Lips that are a little dry against his own, softer than expected. Warm skin, familiar fur as the not-a-blanket shifts against the inside of his arm. Breath that tastes of the sea and of man, somehow at the same time. A touch of salt, from his own cheeks.

 

There’s a sense of strength, there, buoying him up, maybe helping him find his own. Cas urges it to meet his, and Dean steps closer, feeling his boot touch Cas’ foot. He doesn’t want to step on him and their lips part when he pulls back, remembering how to breathe.

 

Dean’s eyes are open but dazed, and Cas’ own are right there. Blue, big, dark and deep. Intense yet more gentle than he’s ever seen them, painfully sincere.

 

“Hello Dean,” Cas says. Dean takes in a new breath, and for the first time in a very long time, he feels like he’s exactly where he’s supposed to be.

 

\- -

 

“Well-done is—well, well-done!” Rowena smiles widely and expectantly, smoothing her dress.

 

Sam grins.

 

“I guess so,” he says, and Rowena cocks an eyebrow.

 

“Are we forgetting something?”

 

Sam can see Dean put it together, and can actually visualize the urge he has to kick himself. Dean hasn’t changed that much, for the years that separate them. Heart on the sleeve, that’s his big brother.

 

No doubt Dean’s worrying about the debt: a favor, a _boon_ at some unknown date of possibly unknowable magnitude to match that of what Rowena performed today. Something of that significance couldn’t be a good thing, if she wanted it for her own ends.

 

Sam stuffs his hands in his pockets. “Nah,” he says, the very image of nonchalance. “I think the soul-joining took care of that.”

 

Dean looks at Sam like he’s crazy, and Cas does that tilty-thing again, but Rowena doesn’t even try to look innocent. There’s even a hint of a smirk at the corner of her mouth, like she’s maybe a little proud.

 

For the briefest of moments, Sam wonders if he missed his calling.

 

“Wanna clue us in, Sam?” Dean’s agitated and impatient—yep, same ol’ Dean.

 

“My soul,” Cas says, before Sam can speak.

 

“His soul,” Sam says, with an agreeable shrug.

 

“Raphael draws his power from the common plane selkie souls inhabit after death, in between incarnations. The longer the soul exists in each life, the more knowledge and power it gathers, part of that returns to this plane when the selkie dies. Especially if the selkie dies suddenly—a disproportionate amount of its power is lost.”

 

Dean snaps his fingers. “That’s why you said sometimes selkies who don’t die on their own terms lose their memories of past lives.”

 

“Something like that,” Sam says, looking at Rowena. “Taking Cas off the field denies Raphael his power—not just when Cas passes. From his lives, before, from now, and ever again.”

 

Dean blinks like he’s digesting that, and Rowena smiles.

 

“Well,” she says. “It sounds like ye’ve got it all figured out!” She resumes packing her things with mobile efficiency. Sam notes that the bowl is entirely clean.

 

Dean looks slowly between Sam and Rowena. “So—that’s it?”

 

Rowena raises her eyebrows. “Congratulations?” she says, speaking the syllables haltingly. “Yer welcome for your little happy-ever-after?”

 

“I am kind of curious as to why you held back,” Sam says, though he has an inkling.

 

“Just checking to see if ye were payin’ attention, Samuel.” Rowena kneels, settling everything in her large bag. She snaps the clasp, and rises to heft it. “You do have quite the aura, ye know that?”

 

Dean stifles a snort, and Sam glances at him. He has to wonder, for a moment. If Dean would be torn, between his typical impulse to laugh at what appears a to be a superficial come-on from a cougar, or defending his little brother from the solicitation of a powerful witch seeking an apprentice—because she’s sensed a possible aptitude for the very thing that tore their family apart.

 

Dean’s face has gone a little serious, and Sam swallows and clears his throat loudly.

 

“Uh. Do you need a ride? Um, to the airport?”

 

Rowena throws him a half-grin like she was waiting for her exit line. “No, I’ve got me own transportation. But yer sweet fer askin.’”

 

With that, she waltzes out of the barn, becoming a silhouette between the gap in the big doors before turning out of view.

 

Somehow, Sam doubts they’ll see her anywhere along the road when they go outside.

 

\- -

 

“So.”

 

Dean looks over at Sam, who’s scuffing his feet in the dirt outside his house and talking to his shoes.

 

“Are we gonna get weird now?”

 

“Dude that was the most _awkward drive ever._ You spent the entire time staring into each other’s eyes.”

 

Dean doesn’t sputter. He _does not._ “You didn’t _say_ anything either!”

 

Sam’s eyebrows go for his hairline and he waves his giant arms. “What was I supposed to say? Congratulations, Dean, you’re marrying a selkie? No offense, Cas.”

 

Cas, of course, is regarding Sam calmly from an angle. “None taken, I assure you.”

 

Sam looks a little relieved until Cas continues, “I am well aware you likely have many questions, and I am happy to answer what I can.”

 

Oh _no._ Sam’s getting a gleam in his eye and _no._ “That can wait, okay, Sam, do _not,_ Cas he’ll talk your damn ear off and—”

 

“It has been a very long time since you’ve spoken with your brother, hasn’t it?”

 

Dean blinks. “Uh, I mean. Well, yeah, but—”

 

“Your home is more than large enough to accommodate—”

 

Now it’s Sam that speaks up. “Whoa, Cas, listen, I appreciate that, but—”

 

“Abso _lutely_ not, we would—we’d tear each other’s hair out—”

 

Cas’ quiet voice shuts them both up immediately. “This has been something of a time for healing, I think, for you and myself.” Cas looks tentatively at his feet, incongruous in the boots Dean wouldn’t not let him wear as his fingers play at his blanket. His _sealskin._

 

“Your happiness is very important to me, and I know your family means very much to you.” Dean can’t look away from Cas’ soulful eyes. He’s pulling the damned puppy-eyes, and he should be pissed that he’s being manipulated, but he knows Cas means it and that’s what decides him.

 

Doesn’t mean he has to be graceful about it.

 

Dean sighs, long and loud, looking up at the clouds, and Sam’s voice is kind of quiet in a way that pings something inside, plucks a string that’s more than a little painful and Dean remembers all at once how much he misses his brother.

 

“Um. How’s your hand?”

 

Dean lets his chin fall as he flips his hand over a couple times. “Barely even a scar,” he says, looking at the perfect, darker seam. “Right on the heart line.”

 

“That’s, uh. That’s actually the…head. Line.” Sam coughs.

 

“Sam is correct,” Cas states calmly.

 

Dean groans.

 

“…Can I see your seal form?”

 

Dean throws his arms in the air because he can _hear_ the eager hopefulness dripping from Sam’s voice.

 

“That’s it! I don’t care. M’going into town, _you_ figure it out.” He storms over to his truck, opens the door and climbs inside, slamming it behind him.

 

He doesn’t start her up, but puts his forearms on the steering wheel and rests his forehead on them. He just needs a moment.

 

Sam and Cas’ voices aren’t as muffled as they maybe think, and he hears them whether he wants to listen or not, Sam’s almost-gentle tones and Cas’ even, gravelly ones.

 

“It’s a lot for him to process. Hell, it’s a lot for _me_ to process.”

 

“I understand. I can honestly say I never thought this day would come.”

 

“Oh, man. I didn’t even think. What’s it _like_ for you? I mean. Uh. We can talk about that later, if you want, but. Um.” There’s a pause. “Be patient with him, okay? He’s a good man. And I—I can tell that you are, too. Uh, a good—selkie.”

 

“Thank you, Sam. I knew even before I came into direct contact with Dean’s soul, but the sentiment is appreciated.”

 

“Yeah. Sure. Uh—how’s your hand? The same?”

 

He hears Cas reassure Sam about his own hand, and he shifts his head on his arms. His sleeves rustle and he sees a nail in the footboard.

 

\- -

 

“—but where does the mass _go?_ Is there heat, or like, how does the sealskin work? It just looks like a blanket, but that’s weird because I can’t see any edges, not really, so—”

 

Dean slams the door to his truck, startling Sam out of his admittedly embarrassing rambles.

 

He’s grinning and proudly holding up…a nail?

 

“I’m hittin’ the hardware store. Wanna ride along, Sammy?”

 

Sam should get the rental and follow Dean in, get a motel. He has two choices, if he remembers right, and one of them is a B&B.

 

He should give Dean and Cas space, for this weird new thing. He knows Dean’s been single for…ever, really, and now he’s—to a _selkie_ and—

 

Sam knows he’s overthinking. He knows Dean’s got more room, and Dean makes a mean omelette.

 

He can stay a few days, before he has to go back. It might be too ambitious, and maybe it’d be better for another time, but…

 

“Wanna fix that shitty-ass deck?” he counters.

 

 

 

**Epilogue: The Last House on the Left**

 

Collette Knight runs a humble store.

 

It began with just herself, many years ago, in a much smaller part of the building. She was new to town, and had her eye on a house a little out of the way, out by an abandoned barn. It needed a lot of work, and at the time was more material and funds than she could invest after opening the store.

 

There was a simple hermit who lived small distance from town, one who was often spoken of but not to, and he was almost shy when he appeared in town to explore the new hardware store. He was an aspiring apiarist and an attentive listener, taking her advice regarding the best hive box fasteners and sealants that would withstand moisture and not harm the bees.

 

Several pictures hang behind her counter. Her daughter with a bee crawling over her finger, fearless; herself in a flowy sundress bought on a whim, wind in her hair, clearly taken by someone who loves her dearly; Cain proudly holding up his first completed hive with a wide, silly grin taking over his face, the sun shining behind him.

 

She’d moved into his old house and together they’d built more hives, a bigger store. They’d built additions and a life and had a beautiful daughter. Each picture holds deep meaning—still-life capturing lasting love and happiness from those closest to her. Collette doesn’t regret a thing, and when she learned someone had bought the old place far up the road, she was almost eager to have a new ear to advise, to help with the roof and the siding and the deck.

 

But Dean Winchester didn’t seem to be interested in these things.

 

He was a quiet man, when she saw him, and something in him reminded her sharply of her Cain, when he was younger, when he was alone. There was something about him that he carried, invisible yet clearly so very heavy.

 

Still, she’s always held hope that one day he might have someone to help alleviate that burden, to bring smiles to his stoic face, to join him in that big house and make some new memories.

 

She’s in the back on an otherwise unremarkable day, idly wondering what to do with an old windfall of lumber that she’s been sitting on for months. It’s honestly taking up space that could be used for more liquid inventory, and she’s a little torn. She was finally contemplating just setting it out front on clearance when Pamela’d given her a call, as she often did. The conversation was typical, gossip and books and the store, until Pam had suggested she hang on to the lumber instead, that she might have a buyer in the wings.

 

It’s the same unremarkable day when Dean Winchester comes into her store with a tall, young man in tow, and his smile catches her off guard, as does his jaunty wave. The younger man watches Dean go into the aisles, and he wanders up to her counter.

 

“Hi,” he says, winsome and polite. “I’m Sam, Dean’s brother?”

 

Collette shakes his big hand; she’d met him once before, years ago. “You’ve gotten awful tall,” she says, and Sam blushes, bashful. “Been a long time. You visiting?”

 

Sam rubs the back of his neck. “Kinda, yeah. He, uh.” He glances over his shoulder and then leans forward, near-whispering. “He just got married.”

 

Collette feels her face light up with surprise. “Dean Winchester’s gotten married?”

 

An adorable smile takes over Sam’s face, and he nods, bangs falling over his forehead. “I think he’s actually got a reason to fix up the old house now.”

 

“He better have a reason for why we weren’t invited,” she says, and Sam grins.

 

“Uh, it’s kinda a long story, but…well. Hopefully you’ll meet him soon.”

 

He jumps when Dean drops a rattling box on Collette’s counter and grins, shoving Sam out of the way. Sam huffs and mutters “jerk” under his breath, and resettles at his side. “I guess need some nails.”

 

Collette looks at the box in front of her, and raises her brow. “So I’ve heard. I understand you and the mister have a house to fix up.” She stifles a grin when Dean’s face goes a little pinched and he elbows Sam, who grunts and shoots him a wounded look.

 

“I have a lot of good lumber in the back,” she says loudly, to prevent any sibling-related shenanigans. “That deck would be a great place to start.”

 

“Yeah?” Dean says, smiling. “Was thinkin’ I could build a chicken coop, too—know any young ladies who might wanna move in with a coupla handsome guys?”

 

Collette tucks in her lips and tries to hold her smile. “I might,” she says.

**Author's Note:**

> so this fic. THIS FIC. this fic
> 
> Life has never intruded quite so much before. I barely made it out alive.
> 
> "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! [Egg](https://youtu.be/PL9iMPx9CpQ)."


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